Starfield Didn’t Receive Extra Pressure from Redfall, Says Xbox

01.09.2023 - 12:37 / wccftech.com / Phil Spencer / Jerret West

Starfield is out and by all accounts, it is receiving a warm reception. It is currently sitting at 88 average score on Metacritic and OpenCritic, both of which include our review (scored 9/10). Here's what Francesco had to say in his final words:

At the start of my journey in Starfield, my experience was admittedly rather dull and boring, but as I collected more Artifacts and got involved in the sprawling sci-fi universe created by Bethesda, I started warming up the game, getting to the point that I have some difficulty putting it down. While Starfield refines more than innovates the typical Bethesda formula, it is undoubtedly one of the best games ever made by the studio and one of the year's finest titles.

It is great news for Microsoft, which had long sought an acclaimed single player exclusive release and also needed to justify the 7 and a half billion spent for Bethesda. Redfall, the first exclusive game published by Bethesda under the Microsoft ownership, didn't exactly fare well when it launched in May.

Speaking to GamesIndustry, Xbox chief marketing officer Jerret West argued that the game didn't really receive any extra pressure from the unsuccessful launch of Arkane's game, although that doesn't mean the pressure wasn't high anyway.

When you think about where we want to get to on the first-party side, we want to get it to flow, where there's no single game that feels like it has that much weight and expectation, I guess you could say. When I look at Starfield, I don't necessarily think that Redfall placed inordinate pressure on it. I think Starfield put pressure on itself, because of the fact it is an ecosystem draw. Bethesda makes a new IP RPG once every two decades. So, there was just the natural attention around that.

What it did was, on the marketing side, sharpen our thinking around how we had to be very planful and precise, and very honest and open with the community, around what Starfield is and what Starfield isn't. So, it did sharpen our thinking, but I don't necessarily know that it was tied to Redfall.

When you are launching something like Starfield, and it's tied to Xbox, people are really looking at it through that lens there is definitely increased expectation and scrutiny on these sorts of titles.

PC gamers are already able to improve their Starfield experience thanks to various mods. As for Redfall, Microsoft's Phil Spencer had promised the game would be improved and 60FPS support would be added to the Xbox version, but neither has happened thus far.