Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds 2 Underperformed, and There Won’t Be a Third

Veteran role-playing game maker Obsidian Entertainment has no plans to continue The Outer Worlds with a third game, the studio has confirmed.

As part of a Bloomberg interview, Obsidian revealed that last year’s The Outer Worlds 2 had underperformed, and a sequel is not in development. Avowed, the company’s other blockbuster RPG released last year, also missed its targets — but Obsidian reportedly still has plans for more from its world of Eora, the same setting as Pillars of Eternity.

On a more positive note, Grounded 2 — yet another 2025 launch — was a hit. But of the three, it had the shortest (and almost certainly the cheapest) development period by far. Grounded 2 took just over two years to meet its early access launch, compared to the more than six years required for both Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2.

In 2025, Xbox trumpeted the fact that Obsidian was about to launch three games in just eight months, with Avowed hitting in February, Grounded 2 launching in early access in July, and The Outer Worlds 2 arriving in October. But the effort was “the result of things going wrong,” studio design director Josh Sawyer has now said — and something that is unlikely to be repeated.

“Spacing those releases helps the company manage its resources and not burn everybody out,” Sawyer told Bloomberg. “It’s not good to release three games in the same year. It’s the result of things going wrong.”

Famously, Avowed began life as a multiplayer game with ambitions to be a cross between The Elder Scrolls and Destiny, before its online co-op was stripped out and the project was rebooted. It then took a while to steady the ship, though the arrival of Carrie Patel as its director saw the game on a smoother path — albeit some three years into the project.

As for The Outer Worlds 2’s prolonged development, Bloomberg’s report simply states that the project was made more difficult by the pandemic and technical challenges. Now, Obsidian’s focus is reportedly fixed on ensuring games can be made on shorter development timelines, with releases more spaced out, and with as generous a profit margin from Microsoft as they can get away withmuster.

“I don’t think anybody really likes five-, six-, seven-year dev cycles,” noted Brandon Adler, who served as director on The Outer Worlds 2. “We’ve kind of grown into that.”

Referencing Microsoft’s eye-opening 30% profit-margin target for some Xbox studios, Obsidian boss Feargus Urquhart said he hoped the company still continued to fund riskier projects and accepted that “maybe where we are going to be from a profitability standpoint isn’t going to be 30%.”

Obsidian is yet to announce its next project, following 2025’s exhaustive release schedule. Work on Grounded 2 continues, of course, and it sounds like Eora will be returned to. (Avowed will also launch for PlayStation 5 later this month.) As for what else might be in the pipeline, time will tell.

“I know everyone on the internet, on every game we ever announce, will constantly reference back to, ‘When’s the next New Vegas?'” Obsidian’s VP of operations Marcus Morgan said last year, referencing the studio’s beloved Fallout game that’s served as the inspiration for the hit Amazon TV series’ second season setting. Well, it’s a good question.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social