Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, offered fans reassurance that Starfield will launch in better shape than what happened with Redfall this week, claiming that the publisher has “done a better job” in terms of helping with development.
While discussing Redfall’s development in a new episode of Kinda Funny Xcast, Spencer explained how acquiring a studio midway through game development — as it has done for both Bethesda Game Studios and Arkane Austin, who are working on Starfield and Redfall respectively — could represent challenge, and that Xbox needs to improve the development process for its titles.
“When we acquire studios, there are games that are in development, and then there are things that are either very early in development or not yet conceived,” Spencer said. “I think we need to get a better handle on games that are halfway through production when they become part of from Xbox”
According to Spencer, Xbox “did a better job” with Starfield because the game was “in an early stage of production” when Bethesda joined Microsoft, and so it was more difficult to help with Redfall.
However, says Spencer, “we should have been there for Harvey Smith (head of studio) and the team. I think that’s our duty. It’s an Unreal engine game, we’ve got a bunch of studios that have done some really great work on Unreal over the years, and I think it’s about time It was too late to help with that when they had certain issues during the development process.”
