It seems Obsidian were working on an Xbox One launch title, but the project was cancelled because Microsoft didn’t see the game as a system seller. However, after talks with various publishers, the game seems to have been revived in a slightly tweaked form.
Read about how Obsidian found success in Pillars of Eternity by embracing its niche appeal.
The project’s cancellation resulted in Obsidian laying off around 40 staff, and Obsidian’s CEO Feargus Urquhart classes it among the lowest points in the studio’s history.
Microsoft expected the project to “feel like a first-party title”, but Obsidian were struggling to drill down to what that meant exactly. It’s no surprise, really. Other than the fact they are all about dudes with guns, Xbox games don’t really have a shared identifier like Nintendo.
Obsidian were also asked to incorporate some of the launch features of the Xbox One, and there was a lot of pressure from the publisher to make a game that people would pay the price of a console for. In the end, the two companies parted ways.
But it seems another publisher has spoken to Obsidian, allowing them to repurpose some of the ideas they had for their original vision and build it into something new.
The new project should be getting announced in “the next few months”. This information comes fromFeargus Urquhart in a candid interview with GameInformer. You can watch that below. The juicy stuff begins at 2:26:00.