Redfall isn’t out until May 2nd, but thanks to a recent round of hands-on previews (you can read our own here) and interviews with the folks at Arkane, we now know a little more about the game than we have before.
One juicy morsel of information to come out of the most recent round of interviews with Arkane comes by way of IGN France, who probed the game’s creative director Harvey Smith for insight into Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda in 2021 and how that affected development of Redfall. As it turns out, it had one especially big impact with regards to the platforms that Redfall would eventually launch on, with Smith confirming the a PS5 version of the game was part of the studio’s original plans before Microsoft shot down any chance of it happening.
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“We were acquired by Microsoft and it was a change with capital C. They came in and said ‘No PlayStation 5, we’re focusing on Xbox, PC and Game Pass,'” Smith told the outlet (quoted here by way of machine translation).
“It’s not very serious, it’s even a good decision I think. [It helps to] support Game Pass and have one less platform to worry about, one less complexity. Game Pass has a ton of players, it could become our biggest game thanks to 30 million, I can’t remember the exact number, subscribers.”
Of course, it’s not overly surprising that Microsoft would want to keep Redfall exclusive to its own platforms, though the takeover didn’t stop other Bethesda-published titles like Ghostwire: Tokyo and Arkane’s own Deathloop from enjoying a healthy period of PlayStation exclusivity.
After getting hands-on with a couple hours of Redfall in a single-player capacity, we came away impressed with its solo offering and more excited than ever to see and play more. You can watch us discuss the game alongside some gameplay footage below:
Redfall launches on May 2nd for Xbox Series X|S and PC, and will be launching into Xbox Game Pass on day one.
