Obsidian Halts Plans for Third Outer Worlds Game

Obsidian Entertainment, the developer behind acclaimed role-playing games, announced on Thursday that it has no immediate plans for a third installment in its popular The Outer Worlds series, following the sequel's disappointing commercial performance last year.

The studio, acquired by Microsoft in 2018, released three titles in 2025: the fantasy RPG Avowed in February, the early access version of survival game Grounded 2 in July, and The Outer Worlds 2 in October. While Grounded 2 has been hailed as a commercial success, Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 fell short of Microsoft's sales targets, according to Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart in an interview with Bloomberg. "They're not disasters," Urquhart said. "I'm not going to say this was a kick in the teeth. It was more like 'That sucks. What are we learning?'"

The Outer Worlds 2, a first-person RPG set in a satirical sci-fi universe, took more than six years to develop, a timeline extended by challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic. This prolonged cycle inflated production costs and raised expectations that the game ultimately did not meet. The original The Outer Worlds, released in 2019, sold around four million copies and...