The May 1 launch of Redfall was a disaster. It was heavily criticized by both audiences and critics (including our own Tyler Korpp, who gave Redfall a 44% review), and performance issues piled up. The state of the game was so dire that when the first major patch was applied earlier this week, less than 100 people were still playing.

As an avid fan of Arkane's games, it was hard to watch, and more than once I wondered if the future of Arkane Austin, the branch of the studio that created Redfall, would be called into question by Redfall's poor performance. But in a recent chat with Axios, Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty took some of the blame for the state of Redfall at launch and painted a not-quite-positive, but brighter-than-imagined outlook for Arkane Austin's future

Booty.

Booty responded to a question about fans' concerns about Arkane Austin's continued operation, stating, "That's the plan right now." The studio is "working hard on updates and ongoing content for 'Redfall'" and Microsoft does not want to disrupt that work with a sudden closure.

Still, it is hard not to read something ominous into this statement from Booty. To say, "That's the plan now" is not a blanket statement of undying support. Plans change, especially when "now" is no longer "now," and while Redfall's developers don't seem to need to worry about the immediate future, I wouldn't be surprised if their long-term viability is on thin ice.

Still, maybe they'll let it out of the bag; Booty does not place all the blame on Arkane Austin for the state of "Redfall" at the time of its release, but "feels accountable that we could have done a better job with Arkane I feel accountable that I could have done a better job with Arkane."

And most shockingly, it seems that people are still playing the game, at least on the gamepath. We're relying solely on Booty's word, but the Xbox boss said that Microsoft's game delivery service is getting "good play" and noted that "it was a failure, but how much of a failure was it?" He added that he would like to help Arkane Austin build "Redfall" into the game he had in mind from the beginning (perhaps different from the version Microsoft hoped to cancel before releasing it).

So hopefully Arkane Austin's mistakes with "Redfall" will not prove fatal, and the development studio for "Prey" is better off than going into a quiet sleep.