I'm hoping that Avowed 2 shows the same growth as Outer Worlds 2, but I am concerned that the improvements don't seem to be increasing sales. Although in retrospect, I'm the target audience for these games, and I still played them on Gamepass instead of paying full price. So I think the business model is more an issue than the quality or marketability of the game.

8 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I'm hoping that Avowed 2 shows the same growth as Outer Worlds 2, but I am concerned that the improvements don't seem to be increasing sales.

That was my reaction to when Deadfire launched -- to nowhere near the buzz as PoE. To be fair, Eternity1, unlike Original Sin, was always big time sold on nostalgia, and eventually, that crave for the good ol' days may be fulfilled. Still, in the case of PoE, it's certainly not the "type of game" at fault -- or Owlcat wouldn't have rolled these things plus DLC plus Enhanced Editions en masse from an Eastern European CRPG factory line. :D

In the case of TOW, it's not the type of game either, see Fallout New Vegas. What would have bummed me out (and kinda did) with TOW1 is that it was announced as a sort of Vegas-Like project (see the announcement trailers... "From thy builders of Vegas!"). And then was more like a baby's version of an Obsidian game, of one I've played better versions of before (not talking size, but depth).

The entire industry is struggling a bit atm though. And if you ask me, the thing to notice recently has been about specilization -- of picking an experience and going all-in on it rather than watering it down so that everybody may be onboard. A game like Kingdom Come would have never seen the light of day at Bioware, Bethesda and Obsidian -- see how Josh had been hoping to make a historical game since forever, but bosses would go: "Nobody would buy that." And even FromSoft exploded by Elden Ring -- a title likewise that would have never seen the light of day at most of the old Western powerhouses of the industry, as deemed as too "inaccessible". These games were allowed to excel at what they were targeting -- and attracted added people simply by doing so, making them curious what's so "special" and "unique" about them. Warhorse have talked about how many history buffs they got onboard who aren't even hardcore gamers, for instance. As a side-effect, Warhorse are now pretty much the only top dogs on the "historical RPG" block too -- there simply is nobody around making a game like them on the scale of them, zero direct competition. Loot and combat and dwarves and elves and Pip-Boys? Dime a dozen.

It's actually not just games. See also music, where there are few omnipresent superstars still left that everybody and their cat owns a record of. And rather, everyone tends to build their own streaming playlists, tailored towards them specifically. The market here too has exploded so much that everybody will eventually find something fit to their tastes. (Over 19,000 games released on Steam alone in 2025). One thing is clear though: Chasing trends with dev cycles of 4-7 years ain't gonna cut it. By that point that trend is long old hat. And everybody else chasing it as well may have already picked up what was left of all the buzz once you're finally ready to ship yourself. :D

Edited 18 hours ago18 hr by Sven_

17 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I'm hoping that Avowed 2 shows the same growth as Outer Worlds 2, but I am concerned that the improvements don't seem to be increasing sales. Although in retrospect, I'm the target audience for these games, and I still played them on Gamepass instead of paying full price. So I think the business model is more an issue than the quality or marketability of the game.

I have to agree. I'm also the key target audience for Avowed but, because I don't have Gamepass, chose to wait for the game to be on sale rather than buy it at launch for that very high retail price. I still bought it only at 20% off, but would've bought it at launch paying full price had that price been reasonable.

20 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

I'd also rather suspect Avowed in particular suffered somewhat from the MS acquisition; suddenly there wasn't pressure on to deliver a game in a way that would keep Obsidian solvent.

Meh, I am sure there are many factors. What I have been wondering is the sheer size Obsidian has grown. About 10 years ago they were a minimal crew relying on crowdfunding to make Pillars1. Now, they are what - a 200-300 studio working on multiple projects at once? Both big and small.

That's a lot of cultural shift to go through, with a lot of new hires, training to do etc. All things considered Obsidan has done pretty well so far. While I didn't love Avowed, I thought there were things to enjoy in there, I hear good things of Outer Worlds2, Grounded did really well, and Pentiment is at the very least a critical darling. So in all - I don't think they had a bad run so far.

30 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

While I didn't love Avowed, I thought there were things to enjoy in there, I hear good things of Outer Worlds2, Grounded did really well, and Pentiment is at the very least a critical darling. So in all - I don't think they had a bad run so far.

For the record: While I didn't love The Outer Worlds (1) either, I thought there were decent things in there as well. Overall, I think it's a rather mid title by Obsidian standards though. And one seemingly scared of its own design goals as well. There is "casualization" -- Pentiment, set up as a narrative experience surely isn't a hardcore gamer's game, and that's perfectly fine! It was never conceived as such. And then there is say the aforementioned looting in TOW1 that doesn't even matter as it's this abundant. In a way, it seems Obsidian came out of their crowdfunding stage under the impression that specialization would not be worth it (after Deadfire, see the quote prior about making real money off two PoEs...). Whereas for Warhorse, Larian, Owlcat et all it was the opposite.

That said, whilst there were layoffs, Obsidian never cut down solely to the crew doing Pillars 1 back then. IIRC, they were still a studio in the ~100-150 people range at that point.

Edited 10 hours ago10 hr by Sven_