Obsidian Entertainment will not be making a third The Outer Worlds game after the 2025 sequel missed its sales forecasts.
Another of the three games it released in 2025, Avowed, similarly missed its targets, but while there are currently no plans to make a third Outer Worlds game, the studio does intend to return to the Avowed universe.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Obsidian boss Feargus Urquhart said that while the third game, Grounded 2, was a hit, missing targets on The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed led the studio to “think a lot about how much we put into the games, how much we spend on them, how long they take.”
“They’re not disasters,” he added. “I’m not going to say this was a kick in the teeth. It was more like: ‘That sucks. What are we learning?'”
With both Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 taking upwards of six years to develop, Urquhart is now committed to dropping the development cycle down to three or four years per game, with studio design director Josh Sawyer adding: “Spacing those releases helps the company manage its resources and not burn everybody out. It’s not good to release three games in the same year. It’s the result of things going wrong.”
“I don’t think anybody really likes five-, six-, seven-year dev cycles,” added Brandon Adler, director of The Outer Worlds 2. “We’ve kind of grown into that.”
In a statement to Bloomberg, general manager at Xbox Game Studios, Mary McGuane, said: “Obsidian develops games that are central to our vision of reaching more players than ever before,” adding that the studio “demonstrates the creative excellence and range that continues to strengthen Xbox’s portfolio.”
