NXT Gamer's Mike reviews Obsidian's latest RPG, Alpha Protocol.
"Obsidian Entertainment is renowned for creating sequels to innovative and successful RPG’s with Knights of the Old Republic II and Neverwinter Nights 2 behind them and Fallout: New Vegas on the way. However with Alpha Protocol, Obsidian has created the game from the ground up without any gameplay mechanics or plotlines to be maintained. For this reason, I was extremely interested to see what Obsidian could produce on their own. Much to my disappointment it seems it wasn’t worth the wait. There are some great ideas but the game is just too inconsistent and for each thing it gets right, it gets three things wrong."
Obsidian admits Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 missed sales expectations for Xbox, while Grounded 2 succeeded.
Of course the live service game does well. Xbox guys aren't shaking the allegations of buying LS games and skipping single player games.
Can’t wait for Grounded 2 on PS5. They need bigger team on Grounded 2 though. They’re slow as molasses.
GamePass doesn't hurt developers I've been told countless times, so that couldn't have been the reason.
The Outerworlds 2 didn't even make it into the top 20 downloads of 2025 on Xbox so gamepass is not the only reason the game underperformed.
It was also released on Playstation which does not have gamepass and didn't make it in the top 20 list either.
I think what held it back was poor marketing and no hype. Many gamers were talking about the Oblivion remake when it came out and that game was a top download on all platforms. Marketing and hype can have a big impact on game sales.
You are spot on, but it's not just that. The game launched in pretty bad shape, at least on PC. I played for around 90 minutes, had a crash that wiped my progress, and decided to refund until they fix all the issues. When all you have to play is an hour or two every few days, losing anything more than 10 minutes of progress is brutal. This is why I can't currently do any Souls like games.
Then I bought Clair Obscur and have been playing that, as well as re-playing BG3. Outer Worlds 2 simply got lost among a lot of good (and stable) games.
I heard good things and will try it out again when I'm done with my recently purchased (on sale) Oblivion Remastered lol. Unless I get more games on sale that is, which is entirely possible.
Divine
Thanks for using logic in your post, as the guy above you took the opportunity to stum a tune no one is dancing to anymore.
Some games don't sell well, plain and simple. We can name 100s of games that missed the mark, and had nothing to do with Game Pass, Final Fantasy, Metroid Prime 4, and Control, to name a few. Avowed and Outer Worlds 2 were never big properties to begin with.
I think, your example proves the flaw of Game Pass.
The fact that it didn't make the top 20 shows that there is little inherent value to putting games on a service day one. People who are buying Game Pass are not simply playing games because they are on the service day 1 they selectively choose what to play.
This game could have released at retail, then been put on Game Pass after six months. Then they could have gotten sales from the people who were interested then put it on the service and not impacted sales as much and it likely would have had the exact same performance metrics on Game Pass.
And the basic thing here is that if so little people are playing the day 1 games then the value of day one games convincing people to sign up for subscriptions is clearly very low.
What you showed is exactly the premise that Outside_ofthe_Box is referencing.
salis844
Thank you for using logic and NOT waiting for someone else to do the talking for you like the person above you (thesoftware730).
Yes some games just don't sell, but putting it day one on gamepass doesn't seem like the best choice to me for the reasons you highlighted. You've said it perfectly so I won't divulge further.
Ah, yes, Microsofts narrative, because they don't want to admit truth, that it cannibalizes day one sales. Because cloud, live services, streaming platform, they are all buzzwords shareholders love to hear. We will have to see how bad Game Pass numbers were, since they aren't public. But by how Obsidian is releasing games that are perfect for promoting Game Pass, not worth full price, on quick release cycles for consistent output, which is more important than quality, so Game Pass users always have something new,... we will have to see how that goes by what fate awaits Obsidian. If that was success and Microsofts KPIs are good, then we will keep seeing more of that and eventual sequels fro those games. If prediction that they did badly even there is true... Obsidian is betting their continued existence on it. I guess in that case only thing I can say about it is shame.
I've been saying it for years that Game Pass is the best deal in media for gamers but deadly to game studios and not sustainable for Microsoft.
Avowed felt shallow to me, I know they said don't expect Elder Scrolls but considering how long it takes for Bethesda to make an ES game and how well Obsidian did with Fallout, you'd think they'd have created their own kind of Elder Scrolls game so people would get their fix from it. Either as a new IP or an Elder Scrolls spin off like how New Vegas was a Fallout spin off. If they did do Elder Scrolls then they could take us to Akavir which hasn't really been explored and features some new races, it's enough to keep them from crossing over with whatever Bethesda does in Tamriel.
It's a double edge sword because I completely respect the studio doing new IPs but with how well New Vegas did under time constraints, lack of resources and overall pressure, I'm just surprised they didn't have a second team to cycle between an Elder Scrolls and Fallout spin off.
Even The Outer Worlds disappointed me a little, it's a decent game but the loading screens felt far more noticeable because it's a space exploration game meaning travelling to different planets a lot for missions, at least if it was one map we have the choice to walk to our objective while exploring new things as we go along.
Creating games today is so much more difficult with the huge limits of modern hardware and the expecations of the public. New Vegas ran on 512 MB GDDR3 compared to 16GB of GDDR6 RAM on today's consoles.
Total of 3100% increase in capacity. Not even considering the CPU/GPU horsepower improvements. New games are so much more difficult and time consuming to develop. Look at GTA VI for example. Been in early development since 2014.
To be honest, my issue with the Outer Worlds games is the story falls off a lot after the first Act. And the gameplay doesn't evolve beyond Act 1 enough, either.
Christopher Dring: "We speak to Obsidian's Marcus Morgan and Justin Britch on the studio's mission to be here in 100 years."
The baton isn't being passed as much as looted off a collapsed old hero.
Would've expected more from Obsidian tbh. Maybe they should stick to the sequels, or try and learn from this.
Hmm, this looks like something i'd like. Of course, it'd be as a rent though. Nice review.
Maybe worth adding to my gamefly queue, but I can't see spending $60 on this game. Consequently, I'm pretty sure Obsidian knew AP was flawed as of E3 last year - to the point where they delayed the game some seven months.
I was also hoping that obsidian would be able to prove themselves with there first non-sequel game, and its disappointing that the game has quite a few flaws. Maybe they should stick to the sequels that they seem to excel at making.
Floptastic!