Xbox head Phil Spencer says Redfall's problems "not a delay question"

rockpapershotgun.com:

Redfall currently has 'Mostly Negative' reviews on Steam, reflecting a co-op shooter that feels sparse, unsatisfying and buggy to players. Our Ed is no fan either. In an interview with Kinda Funny earlier today, Xbox head Phil Spencer talked at length about Redfall's issues.

"I'm upset with myself," said Spencer, while defending the decision not to delay the game.

"I'll just say all up, there's nothing that’s more difficult for me than disappointing the Xbox community. I've been a part of it for a long time. I obviously work on Xbox, head of the business, have a lot of friends, get a lot of feedback. And just to watch the community lose confidence, be disappointed, I'm disappointed."

Spencer, who looked throughout like a YouTuber in an apology video, did offer counters to some of the criticism of decisions surrounding Redfall. For example, on the subject of delaying the game to address its issues, Spencer argued that it wouldn't necessarily have helped in this particular case.

"When a game needs to be delayed, we did with Halo, we did with Starfield, we did with Redfall, because the production timeline is saying, we have this vision, and our production timelines don't get us to the completion of that vision, we do delay games. We do that," said Spencer.

While acknowledging that Redfall has bugs, Spencer suggests the issue lies more on its delivery of the creative vision. "If I think about a team's execution on a game, we had a creative vision and did we realise that vision through the game we created? That's not a delay question if the answer is no. This isn't a Redfall specific conversation.

"I think there's a fundamental piece of feedback that we get that the game isn't realising the creative vision it had for