Where's Paul Heyman when you need him? Now that's a advocate.

Millions of dollars is a lot to spend on a title nobody has faith in. Same with Scalebound.

I agree with most of MS's cancellations lately. If the budget gets too high and the game's no good, ax it. Better that than publishing a high-cost turd.

Isnt that what they said?

They didnt have a person that could adovate for why they should continue to get money to fund the project.

They didnt have that 1 guy that believed in the project, when it needed it, and could say so to the people that held the money to make it.

"there has to be someone at the publisher" who can defend the project and assure the higher-ups the game is going to be good. In the case of Stormlands, unfortunately, Obsidian didn't have someone like that to champion the game at Microsoft."

^ from the OP.

Or is the "someone at the publisher" a Microsoft guy? Did microsoft just not believe in Obsidian and then shut down the project?

Ah, I see. Researching this: Stormlands was 2012, Obsidian had to lay off people after the cancellation and then came the successful Kickstarter for Pillars. I think Obsidian is better off with crowdfunding than with classical publishers, and they seem to think so too, as Pillars 2 is also in crowdfunding:

https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire

Obsidian has already gotten Pillars of Eternity 2 adequately crowdfunded, so I think Obsidian has recovered.

MS thing is this. We want game. You make game. We want ALL this from game...here is 5 dollars,make it. Studio says but that's not enough. MS Don't care make it happen. Studio says....okay. After sometime MS says why game not finished. Studio says because not enough money to make game. MS says fuck you,you cancelled.

MS motto this gen is "Fuck you it's cancelled" But hey it's ok we have a 4k with nothing to play instead.

Yep, but you said they couldn't defend it. That's not the same. If the studio that makes the game says it's a great game everyone is yawning. If someone on with his office besides yours says the same, then you at least spend some attention to the game. That Obsidian can make great games is shown already, if you don't believe that, look at Pillars of Eternity, a game funded not by Microsoft but by gamers at Kickstarter. They had more faith in Obsidian than MS, and Obsidian delivered.

Some things to consider are that Microsoft reportedly wanted this game to feature Kinect and that they were really pushing "games as a service" at the time.  A single-player RPG might not have fit Mattrick's vision for Xbox.  We know a traditional Fable didn't.

You worded it as though Obsidian didn't believe in the project when they clearly did.  They just didn't have anyone in Mattrick's regime willing to go to bat for it.

Xbox leadership was making bad choice after bad choice at the time.  I see no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt considering how things turned out.

Every project needs a "hype man" in pretty much every type of business. What I find weird here is hes almost passing the blame of their own shortcomings onto the idea that they just didn't have someone with enough pull to go in and fight for their game. Maybe do a good enough job making the game to where you don't need someone to basically go in and go Jerry Maguire for your game?

Imagine what kind of money pits/train wrecks games like this and Scalebound must have been. Microsoft has recently released Quantum Break, which must have had a HUGE budget based not only on development but hiring all of those well known actors and filming all that footage. And ReCore, which they priced at $40 and was a great game but a critical dud. I see this thread on GAF and talk about how MS must only want to fund guaranteed hits and I wonder what alternate reality these people have been living in this generation, lol.