Xbox has had a challenging couple of years, to say the least.
Redfall recently launched to middling reviews and criticism of the game's bugs, co-op issues, and performance, at a time when Xbox was already suffering from concerns and criticisms regarding a multi-year silence from many of its 23 internal studios. Up until yesterday's showcase at least, the narrative has been that Xbox's AAA efforts have been floundering. But it all begs the question: what could Xbox reasonably have done differently?
Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty, like his fellow executives, recognizes that Xbox has a lot to prove to those who have been watching it closely since its late 2010s acquisition spree. So following the Xbox Game Showcase, I ask him if there's anything he'd do differently if he could go back to 2017 and play it all out again. Booty responds by telling me he'd change how he sets expectations: not with the Xbox audience, but with they developers Xbox acquired.
"When a studio becomes part of Xbox, like it or not, they become part of first-party," Booty responds. "And as part of first-party, they exist in a different spotlight; people look at them through a different lens. And it is my responsibility, our responsibility as the wider Xbox org, to make sure they understand that, and then to make sure that they’re set up and that we set expectations appropriately. If you’re a small studio that’s independent, you might ship a game, you might be working on something and say hey, this isn’t really working on, let’s just ship this thing, get it out of the way and move onto our next game. We don’t have that luxury as part of first-party.
"If I were to look back, where I feel a little remiss on the Redfall thing, that project was started before we acquired Zenimax, and I think we could have done a better job of onboarding them...If I were to take a post-it note back in time in my little time machine to 2017, it’d be, make sure that everybody understands that they don’t get to just ship a game as Double Fine or as inXile anymore. They’re going to be looked at as part of first-party."
Since Redfall launched to middling reviews and criticism of the game's bugs, co-op issues, and performance, Xbox leadership has taken responsibility for the disappointment, as well as indicated they thought it was going to perform better due to stronger mock reviews. On reflection, though, head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty adds that part of the reason the team didn't recognize the issues was due to what claims is "tunnel vision" and missing the bigger picture.
“Sometimes, a team can just get a little bit of tunnel vision around their game, and sometimes management can have the opposite problem where maybe they’re zoomed a little too far out," Booty says. "And it was a case of us having indicators that the game was going to perform a certain way...we had people play the game, we had reviews, we do mock reviews, we just had indicators that it was going to perform better than it did. And I think the team was so committed to what they were building that they just had a little bit of tunnel vision."
Booty goes on to say that accountability for Redfall ultimately falls on himself and ZeniMax head James Leder, and urges players not to blame the individual developers.
"If you’re working for Arkane, you’ve spent years working on Redfall," he says. "To me, I just feel for the people that spent all their time working on that, and are coming under all this fire for their game. I just immediately go to, how do we support the team? How do we support them to get the game in good shape, and what can we learn from this?"
We also spoke to Booty about why games are taking so much longer to make nowadays. Booty also appeared on a panel with other Xbox heads to talk about Xbox's first-party strategy, alongside Xbox head Phil Spencer speaking on the importance of console. And you can catch up on everything from the Xbox Showcase and IGN's Summer of Gaming right here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.