In what’s possibly been the biggest news story of the day, Bethesda announced earlier that it wouldn’t be able to commit to the November 11th release date for Starfield. Instead, it will be pushing back the planned release dates of both its highly-anticipated sci-fi RPG Starfield and Arkane’s open-world FPS title Redfall. The games will now be pencilled in for a launch in “the first half of 2023”, and as you might expect, the reactions online have been a very mixed bag.
Now, Xbox head Phil Spencer has taken to Twitter to share his thoughts on the announcement and has acknowledged some of the fans’ frustrations regarding the reveal of a delay. Spencer also makes the point of highlighting that the decision to move the planned release dates of Starfield and Redfall hasn’t been an easy one for the teams at Bethesda and Arkane either.
“These decisions are hard on teams making the games & our fans,” says Spencer, before continuing on to acknowledge that he’s listening to the community’s reaction to the news. “While I fully support giving teams time to release these great games when they are ready, we hear the feedback. Delivering quality & consistency is expected, we will continue to work to better meet those expectations.”
Interestingly, Phil Spencer makes a real note here that meeting player expectation is the highest priority for both the studios and for Xbox. He also makes a point of noting the steadiness of releases (or lack thereof) that Xbox players may be expecting from the company. Hopefully, as we get further into 2022 and ahead into 2023, Xbox gamers may start to see some of this promised consistency when it comes to new game releases.
As for Starfield and Redfall, we’ll just have to wait and see when further news is available regarding progress and a potential launch date.
