Xbox Game Pass has changed the metric of success, says Obsidian boss - TrueAchievements

In an interview with NME, Obsidian's Feargus Urquhart describes the bleak reality of creating massive RPGs in a world of increasingly progressive technology, leading to high production costs.

According to Urquhart, after the studio struggled to sell publishers a title with a $60 million budget, it had to decide if it could continue creating the games it wanted or change its business.

Fortunately, Microsoft backed up "a dump truck with a bunch of gold bars," offering to purchase the studio during its 2018 rampage of acquisitions.

While Urquhart is confident that Obsidian would have gone on to make The Outer Worlds 2 after the success of its predecessor, the benefits of being under the wing of Xbox Game Studios have added 90 additional staff to the team, and given them the flexibility to develop Avowed alongside The Outer Worlds 2 and Pentiment — the latter of which, along with Grounded, were already in the works before Microsoft came along and subsequently supported.Microsoft classes Obsidian as a "limited integration studio," meaning it operates as a separate company and Urquhart continues to run Obsidian Entertainment.

While the team has the flexibility and budget to continue making large worlds, Urquhart says that the metric for success has changed slightly due to the rise of Xbox Game Pass.

“I can’t go off and spend a billion dollars and only a million hours get played on Game Pass, ‘cause people aren’t paying that much for their subscriptions," Urquhart said.