Scrawl: "Dungeon Siege III is the latest in Gas Powered Games’ successful franchise, however, this time is having development handled by Obsidian Entertainment. Publisher Square Enix is taking this on as one of their first western RPGs to be published – going as far as to buy the IP from Gas Powered Games."
Jason Dietz: "We reveal the past year's best and worst video game publishers (based on their 2025 releases) in the 16th edition of our annual Game Publisher Rankings."
I was just going to say this, their biggest and top rated game here is TLOU2 for PC….it’s embarrassing.
Even Ubisoft and EA are ahead
Kind of surprised Nintendo is pretty low aswell, their biggest game is also a rerelease with the Switch 2 version of TotK.
That’s what happens when you start shutting down your own studios and forget what actually made you matter in the industry in the first place. Sony used to set the standard — now it feels like they’ve lost that identity. And if they decide to walk away from the PC market too, that’s going to be another huge mistake — that platform is only growing, and ignoring it now would just put them even further behind.
@christopher:” Take note, Sony, you're falling behind by a lot.”
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Why single out Sony? Microsoft didn’t do any better than the year before 5th same as Sony 9th and they have acquired activision and other mayor titles that have boosted their score massively from a 9th and Sony a 4th the year before the acquisitions.
Sony does need to do better without a doubt and I do hope they do take note but not the note of buying publishers is the way to succeed.
1. Microsoft didn't get worse.
2. Sony got way worse.
3. Because Sony needs the criticism the most considering their publishing output this generation has been propped up by last gen ports and third-party developers for the most part.
1Victor,
I don't wanna speak for Christopher, but like most of us we recognize that Sony's output this Gen has been way below their own standards.
Also Sony did buy a fair amount of Devs, I know you will say they were not publishers, and don't compare in size, but they had their fair share of Aquisitions, including the very well established Bungie.
The overall point is with their stellar first party track record of the past, they should not be going down, they are singled out because they are some of the best videogame devs/publisher on the planet...no matter what reasons we attribute to the situation, they are moving in the wrong direction... period.
Its widely accept that Sony this generation has been underwhelming. We've had more peripheral releases, controller variants, PS5 accessories than games it feels like. The exclusives were also PS4 and what little output they have put exclusively on PS5 is nowhere near as memorable as what came in every generation before that.
This isn't a Sony hate post but anyone who's older and has been around for a long time gaming will agree that PS5 is by far Sony's worst generation. As much as Xbox is in the gutter, I pray the do bounce back in the hope we get Sony to wake up again.
If you want to critique MS... you are doing so towards their management. The games output and their hardware have been much better than PS this gen. Sadly... people still hold a grudge against XB because of MS. Thankfully i am not that petty... I've been enjoying their games output in the drought of PS. And add in some NS1/2 games as well to balance things out. Things will change for me once Wolverine hits, and I start using my 5 more. That one I'm looking forward to. And the Marvel fighter... I'm not a GTA player so that has no bearing on my view of things.
Big part of that has been the live service push resulting in cancellation or flop after flop but when they put out the games their fans want we get amazing stuff like astro bot
Leadership really screwed the pooch trend chasing
https://www.metacritic.com/...
https://www.metacritic.com/...
Well I apologize I was wrong about not doing worse but my statement of Microsoft getting a boost still stand 🤷🏿
Well OBSCURED unlike you I’m honorable enough to recognize when I’m wrong and apologize.
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@ The software you know there’s no comparison between what Microsoft acquired and what Sony acquired that’s why you tried to get ahead of the conversation, yes we all know Sony can do better than what they have done this gen but they inhaled the poison GAS they thought would bring money for years but we make sure they got the message and quite a few games got cancelled you know as well a hit like that take years to be corrected and by now they hopefully will have taken steps away from the GAS and slowed their approach to them.
You will say anything when you are in denial that your hardware is dead and nobody wants your platform. Good luck with Helix because nobody will buy it.
But... but... the garbage-mongers always tell us that Square Enix is in trouble! 😂
Square doesn't help that it fear mongers itself with ridiculous 'goals' that they can't reach and then they proclaim failure if they don't reach it. They're quite freaking profitable and people act like they're dying.
Keep in mind that these "proclamations" are usually third-hand bad translations from somedude who was at the investor conference, posted on Twitter, and picked up by press and youtubers like they were gold, and then when the official translation comes out, they're much softer statements, but at that point, the damage is done.
to be very fair
being number one on these things does not indicate how "well" their games do selling wise.
Square Enix announced its financial results for the first nine months of the fiscal year, related to the period between April and December 2025.
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.
