Obsidian seems to have accidentally let the release date for Avowed leak out.
As reported by Windows Central, the official blog post in the Obsidian website shared a release date of November 12, 2024, from a post by the studio’s director, Carrie Patel. A few hours later, the date was removed from the website.
We don’t know why Obsidian removed the release date from their own site, but as Windows Central’s Brendan Lowry points out, it may not be the actual release date after all. It’s possible that they already decided to release Avowed after or possibly before the November date, but had not updated their internal communications accordingly.
Moving the release date around may not be Obsidian’s decision so much as it is Microsoft. As you may have noticed, as great a showing as Xbox Games Showcase had this year, some of the games they revealed were also in last year’s Xbox Games Showcase. That includes Avowed itself, and fans have simply been waiting on the promise of this game’s release.
This may have created a situation where too many of the games slated to release on Xbox are coming out at the same time. If multiple games come out in November or December, that would certainly mean a huge celebration for fans and a big payday for Xbox. But, there’s a risk that those games could cannibalize each other’s sales. Even if the games are different, there is a general state of competition between games for attention, and that’s a bigger issue if they are only available on limited platforms at launch, such as PC and Xbox only.
It’s also possible that the release date is correct, and Microsoft simply wanted to reserve the release date for marketing reasons. Of course, Microsoft is mindful of the battle for information between themselves and other game companies. Microsoft’s marketing may have been planning to get that information out at a time when they can ensure all the attention goes to the game. They may have also planned the information reveal in a planned future presentation or event.
In any case, as we have seen, all this hullabaloo over Avowed ‘s possible release date is certainly warranted. Last year’s presentation reassured fans that Obsidian was making the same kind of game they always were, with a 3D action RPG layer on top of it. But now, we also see that Obsidian has flexed their graphical presentation muscles, to also give us a title up to expectations for the current generation of game consoles.
Whatever the release date will turn out to be, Avowed is coming to Xbox Series X|S and Windows via Steam. It will also be Day One Game Pass.
