Avowed Developer CEO Says Studio Has Grown Significantly Under Xbox

Summary

Obsidian Entertainment grew to over 280 staff after being acquired by Xbox Game Studios, expanding team to work on multiple projects.
Despite troubled development, Obsidian’s Avowed impressed with a polished experience and successful RPG release.
The acquisition by Xbox has allowed Obsidian to continue working independently, focusing on quality and longevity in the industry.

When we hear news that a big corporation is gobbling up a studio, we usually react with trepidation, given that the acquisition usually involves project cancellations, layoffs, and the like.

That’s not the case with Avowed developer Obsidian Entertainment, which was acquired by Xbox Game Studios in 2018.

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Obsidian Entertainment Balloons To Over 280 Staff Under Xbox

Speaking to IGN (via Windows Central), Obsidian Entertainment CEO Fearus Urquhart discussed the studio’s staff changes and how the Xbox acquisition affected them.

“When we came on with XGS and Xbox, we were about 170, 180 people [in 2018], and through the course of the last five or six years, we’ve not only grown the studio to about 285 people, but we also have a lot of really good co-dev partners with Heavy Iron and Beamdog,” Urquhart states.

This added personnel meant that Obsidian Entertainment could work on multiple projects simultaneously. While a large portion of the dev team was working on a AAA game like Avowed, a smaller group of devs at the studio managed to work and push out the survival game Grounded and the text-heavy game Pentiment.

Avowed Director Explains Why The Game Lacks Options For Romance

Despite having a powerful story, the director of Avowed has come out to explain why the game lacks any traditional options for romance.

For the studio’s latest release, Avowed, Obsidian recently revealed that the RPG took six years to make and underwent multiple reboots. Even with its troubled development, the action-RPG has impressed gamers and critics. Our review states, “Avowed proves that bigger isn’t always better. Instead of making a game that tries to outsize everything on the market, Obsidian stayed true to its vision and delivered a polished experience that I fell in love with.

There are instances that a studio acquisition works out well for both parties, but that’s not always the case. While Xbox owns Obsidian, it seems the studio’s parent company is OK with the development house to do its own thing. In a recent industry chat, Obsidian execs talked about not chasing huge profits and wanting to last for 100 years, as some of the reasons why the studio works amid all the layoffs and studio closures happening within the industry.