Xbox |OT|

[Machiavellian]

trunkswd said:

Zippy6 said:

Jason Schrier has put out a new article with some quotes from the head of Obsidian. Seems grounded 2 is a success but outer worlds 2 and avowed didn't do as well as they hoped.

"Last year the developer released three games—a rare and impressive achievement for a studio of its size—but two of them failed to meet sales forecasts set by Obsidian’s parent company, Microsoft Corp. “They’re not disasters,” Urquhart says. “I’m not going to say this was a kick in the teeth. It was more like: ‘That sucks. What are we learning?’”

"While Grounded 2 was a big hit, the disappointing results from the other two have led Obsidian to “think a lot about how much we put into the games, how much we spend on them, how long they take,” Urquhart says. Both Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 were in development for more than six years, inflating their production costs and the company’s financial expectations."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-03/xbox-studio-behind-grounded-outer-worlds-is-charting-new-path

Avowed development rebooted partway through otherwise it would have likely taken less time. I do agree they need to lower development time to 3 or 4 years rather than the 6+ years Avowed and Outer Worlds 2 took. Unless they work on a new Fallout (one can hope :P ) as that would probably need to be AAA quality rather than the AA quality of Avowed and Outer Worlds 2.

How are you defining AAA.  Cost or look.  In Obsidian mind, those 2 games probably reached AAA in cost though it did not look at the same level of fidelity as say some of Sony efforts.