Well, this is extremely disappointing to hear.

The Outer Worlds 2 did not seem to sell as well as either Obsidian or Xbox had hoped it would. The confirmation of the game failing to sell to expectations was confirmed in a Bloomberg interview with Obsidian. In fact, of the three titles Obsidian somehow managed to launch throughout 2025, sales of only one of them met internal expectations.

In 2025, Obsidian Entertainment released the fantasy-RPG Avowed, survival game Grounded 2, and planet hopping sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds 2. Of these three, only Grounded 2 managed to become a hit for the studio. Both Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 failed to meet sales expectations. Part of the reason that both of these titles underperformed rests in the fact that both of them were in development for more than six years. This rather long development period meant that production costs and the company's financial expectations kept going up as time went on.

According to Obsidian's design director Josh Sawyer, it really wasn't a good sign that they were releasing three games over the course of a single year. In fact, he says that it was the "result of things going wrong."

Specifically, Avowed seemed to go through a couple of different iterations before it finally released as a single player fantasy RPG. The game originally began as a multiplayer title that supposed wanted to be a mix of The Elder Scrolls and Destiny. The game was rebooted at least once with all multiplayer aspects stripped from the project.

The Outer Worlds 2 development was a result of difficulties that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Xbox marketing certainly hyped up 2025 as the "Year of Obsidian," due to the trio of releases. Obsidian, however, was feeling the pressure as they only have 280 employees. As Bloomberg points out, this is well below the number of employees at studios like Larian (more than 500 employees), CD Projekt Red (more than 1,300) that release one game every few years. Bloomberg says that "Obsidian's support teams were stretched thin, with frazzled staff leaping frantically from one game to the next."

Grounded 2 benefitted from a much shorter development time when compared to Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2. It also helped that Obsidian split off a lot of the production duties to a different studio led by a few of their senior staff. This meant that they weren't developing the entirety of Grounded 2 in-house.

Obsidian may not be planning an Avowed 2 any time soon but they are at least keen on returning to the Pillars of Eternity universe which serves as the basis for Avowed. The news isn't quite as good for The Outer Worlds 2. Due to its poor sales, a third Outer Worlds game will not be happening. That's not to say there isn't more of The Outer Worlds coming at all. Obsidian is still working hard on the two planned DLC expansions for The Outer Worlds 2. Release dates and details for either of these expansion has not yet been shared.

Beyond the DLC for The Outer Worlds 2 and continued content updates for Grounded 2, there really is no word on what Obsidian is working on next. Bloomberg says that the studio would like to continue working "on projects big and small," which include entirely new games. They also want to space out their releases a little better so as to avoid another situation where they have multiple titles coming out over the course of a single year.

I recently completed both The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed. I played them back to back in the past month or two. It's a shame that The Outer Worlds 2 hasn't found greater success, because it is honestly a really fantastic game. I already enjoyed the first game quite a bit (though many players would not agree with my assessment), but the sequel is better in basically every capacity. I know it gets tossed around a lot when it comes to Obsidian titles, but I really felt as I did when I played through Fallout: New Vegas for the first time. It felt like "old" Obsidian to me. Though it's basically already confirmed that there will never be The Outer Worlds 3 to look forward to, I'd still strongly suggest checking out The Outer Worlds 2 at some point. I was already thinking about what skills and abilities I'd like to try for my second playthrough before I even finished my first one, which just isn't something I do often while playing games.

As for Avowed, it was alright. My mistake was probably playing it immediately after The Outer Worlds 2 (like within a day or two), which maybe gave me a little bit of Obsidian gameplay fatigue. I also never played any of the Pillars of Eternity titles, so a lot of the history, lore, names, and such kind of went over my head in many instances. I also might just be more of a fan of sci-fi rather than fantasy. I did feel like the writing and general gameplay in Avowed wasn't nearly as strong as The Outer Worlds 2. Still, it wasn't a bad game at all.