Obsidian's Grounded 2 Was a 'Big Hit,' Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed Did Not Meet Expectations - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 February 2026 / 2,061 Views
Xbox first-party studio Obsidian Entertainment released three games in 2025 - Grounded 2, The Outer Worlds 2, and Avowed - with two of them having failed to meet expectations, according to Obsidian head Fergus Urquhart in an interview with Bloomberg.
Urquhart stated Grounded 2 was a "big hit," but the two first-person RPGs, The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed, had "disappointing results." He added the studio needs to "think a lot about how much we put into the games, how much we spend on them, how long they take."
Both games took over six years to develop and Urquhart said that needs to be cut down to three or four years going forward.
Obsidian is working on new content for The Outer Worlds 2 and Grounded 2, however, there are no plans for The Outer Worlds 3. However, the studio plans to keep developing games in the Avowed universe, which is the same universe as Pillars of Eternity.
Obsidian studio design director Josh Sawyer added that the developer releasing three games in the same year wasn't on purpose and it wasn't necessarily a good thing.
"Spacing those releases helps the company manage its resources and not burn everybody out," said Sawyer. "It’s not good to release three games in the same year. It’s the result of things going wrong."
Avowed released for the Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Xbox Game Pass in February 2025, with it launching on the PlayStation 5 later this month on February 17.
Grounded 2 launched for the Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Xbox Game Pass in Early Access in July 2025.
The Outer Worlds 2 released for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Xbox Game Pass in October 2025.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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That something as mid as Avowed took 6 years is ridiculous. When a game has to "change directions" multiple times during development then it might as well just be cancelled because the end result is rarely good. Especially when the first vision for the game was the one people were excited about.
I think that's a very negative way of looking at something people have poured years of work into. If a course correction can see a release date in a reasonable time and recoup majority of the costs, then why not?
Avowed isn't especially exciting to me, but its pretty well received and I'm sure there are millions who have played and enjoyed it across gamepass etc
The Obsidian that made Fallout New Vegas is not the same Obsidian of today
A lot of them are - Feargus Urquhart, Josh Sawyer, and Chris Avellone were the main talent behind NV.
Chris Avellone is no longer at Obsidian
Feargus Urquhart is the studio head and not as involved in the games as previously
Josh Sawyer is working on his own game?
A game designed for game pass likely had a mediocre budget to begin with; I am not surprised many people thought avowed was average.
Honestly I bought none of these games because I cant find them as a physical release.
These were more games that Microsoft didn’t really advertise, weren’t they?
Plus it’s unclear how they are measuring success/failure. If its just by sales income then Gamepass plus the lack of advertising is clearly going to hammer them.
Outer Worlds 2 got a fair bit of press, although much of it was negative ($80 price tag they bailed on for example).
Yet, it's an odd thing how they have switched stances over time. They used to boast about players, now they are saying they didn't meet sales expectations? Avowed is only on PC and Xbox and I presume nearly all Xbox players played on GP.
