Redfall Needs to Be Delayed by Xbox

Even though it's slated to release in less than a month, Xbox and Bethesda would be smart to delay Redfall, the upcoming first-person shooter from Arkane Studios. Within the past day, Arkane revealed that a 60fps performance mode wouldn't be present in Redfall at launch on Xbox consoles and would instead be added to the game at a later day. As expected, this announcement was met with widespread anger and annoyance from fans, myself included. And although it might seem like a drastic measure to delay Redfall for this reason alone, the bigger problem at play comes with Xbox's ongoing inability to release competent exclusives. 

At this point in time, it's not a revelation whatsoever that Xbox hasn't had a strong track record when it comes to first-party releases. Outside of one-off games like Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, or the ever-acclaimed Forza Horizon series, Xbox has consistently fumbled when it comes to its most notable exclusives going back to the Xbox One era. There's no bigger example of this in recent history than with Halo Infinite, which wasn't only delayed a full year from its original release window, but when it did arrive, it was found to be lacking greatly, particularly due to small offerings on the multiplayer front. Not to mention, it didn't include Forge mode or campaign co-op until far later. 

Based on its current trajectory, Redfall looks like it's going to be dropping in a state that's a bit similar to Halo Infinite. Not only is the absence of a performance mode with Redfall the game's latest shortcoming, but Arkane revealed earlier this year that the upcoming exclusive would require a persistent online connection in order to play, even in a single-player capacity. Arkane claims it's looking into running this requirement back, it's yet another instance where fans are being told that they'll have to wait to get the version of the game that they want. 

To be fair, Xbox isn't the only publisher that has taken to releasing games in a half-baked state over the past few years. Triple-A game development as a whole has started to have the approach of "release now, fix later." Battlefield 2042, Cyberpunk 2077, and Pokemon Scarlet/Violet are just a handful of examples of games that fit into this category. Unlike other publishers, though, Xbox is trying to simultaneously sell hardware, and more notably, sell fans on an ecosystem to invest in. Xbox Game Pass might have a number of great titles in its expansive library, but Xbox exclusives surely provide the biggest opportunity for Microsoft to sell more subscriptions. If Xbox's own games keep coming up short on a routine basis, why would anyone look to subscribe to Game Pass for the long haul?

Even if Redfall doesn't end up getting delayed, which is the most likely scenario, those at Xbox still have to take notice of how fans have responded to this latest situation. These same missteps cannot keep happening in the future when Xbox will look to release exclusives of a larger stature. To do so would continue to damage the Xbox brand even further and would keep Microsoft comfortably in third place behind the likes of PlayStation and Nintendo. 

If Xbox wants to be taken more seriously by even its most hardcore fans, it needs to start putting quality over everything else. Redfall might look quite fun and it's something that I've been growing more eager to play as more info and gameplay has started to come out. But for it to be releasing in such a lacking manner this coming month doesn't do much to convince people that upcoming titles like Starfield, Fable, or Perfect Dark will be any different. As a result, it's hard to understand why anyone would look to invest in an Xbox Series X or S if this is the quality that can be expected in the coming years.