Xbox |OT|

[Ryuu96]

Angelus said:

Ryuu96 said:

A lot of the marketing is about how The Outer Worlds 2 is bigger in every way than The Outer Worlds 1, I think they also said it is their biggest game ever, that is naturally going to come with a bigger budget. Obsidian's own statements can be true whilst The Outer Worlds 2 still remains a fairly expensive game to make, I think that more speaks to how gross AAA budgets are nowadays.

But I don't understand why we're telling them to make The Outer Worlds 2 cost less than The Outer Worlds 1, Lol. The Outer Worlds 1 launched on the same date as Call of Duty, without Steam and at $60 and thrived, it went on to sell 5m+ copies and that's not even including player numbers which we don't know. It caused a sequel to be almost immediately greenlit, that despite a Steam CCU almost exactly the same as Avowed!

It's bigger in every single way than the $60 The Outer Worlds so why would they make it $50 when it's bigger, cost more to make and $60 was already a proven success for them. I mean sure, $50 would be even more sales but, everything would sell more if it cost less, Lol. I think $60 is what it SHOULD be. But I just wouldn't be angry at $70. But $80 is nonsense.

Lets meet in the middle and agree on $60

You talked about how gross AAA budgets are, which is of course correct, but...do Obsidian make AAA games? I don't think so. I don't look at Avowed, Outer Worlds, or Grounded and see AAA games. Outer Worlds 1 charged the industry standard, which is fair enough when you're in a sea of games charging the industry standard, and it's a standard that's been accepted or ages. It's an entirely different matter when you're one of the first games announced to be releasing at a new, more expensive standard the industry would like to adopt. Now you're getting compared to every game we've had before that was of a higher quality and the players got for less. You gotta show people something that makes them go "holy shit!" Obsidian makes good games. But they haven't made a "holy shit" game in ages. 

Anyway, it's a moot point I suppose. MS must be making the calculation that the vast majority of players will/should come from GP, and so whoever is absolutely determined to buy it instead might as well be paying the absolute maximum...question is, how many players you lose with that approach. On Xbox, probably not a whole lot. But on PC and PS (it's releasing on PS, right?), probably a fair few.

I consider New Vegas, The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed to all be AAA in their respective timelines. Just because a lot of AAA titles today are $150m+ doesn't mean the $50m-$100m ones aren't AAA anymore. Obsidian titles probably have a similar budget to Remedy titles which are also AAA. Also, remember that Obsidian is based in California which is extremely expensive for videogame development, Lol.

The Outer Worlds 1 has an estimated budget of $30m-$40m according to CNET. Avowed's budget would have been higher given development costs have increased, it had a bigger team and was in development for longer. The Outer Worlds 2's is almost certainly higher budget than Avowed. We're probably looking at around $60m-$70m.