Obsidian has come to strange conclusions on how 2025, the “year of Obsidian”, has played out.
As the studio revealed in a new interview, Grounded 2 ended up becoming more successful than either Avowed or The Outer Worlds 2.
The latter two did not meet sales targets, after having larger budgets, longer development times, and bigger marketing campaigns. In Obsidian head Feargus Urquhart’s words:
I’m not going to say this was a kick in the teeth. It was more like: ‘That sucks. What are we learning?’
Some people might assume Grounded 2 found success because it’s a live service title, but Obsidian saw different reasons. Grounded 2 reached its sales targets easier because it was a smaller game that took less to make.
On top of that, Obsidian outsourced some of its development to Eidos Montreal, offsetting their own costs.
It does not sound like Obsidian is necessarily in peril within Microsoft. But they are planning to focus on smaller games moving forward.
They also said there are no plans for The Outer Worlds 3, but they will dip back into the fantastic world of Avowed, AKA, The Pillars of Eternity.
