“Good enough for game pass”
Laura brings up some excellent points
- Obsidian shipped on time, after being acquired
- Obsidian already has outer worlds 2 in the works
- Obsidian gets the OW team back together
Avowed may not be a win on its own, but in the context of a MS studio it’s a win, and they cleared their plate to focus on OW2.
I will admit I haven’t watched the video (I’m going to when I get home) but I thought Avowed was doing pretty well?
A number of major podcasts and outlets are signing its praises. It has some divisive scores for sure, but I’ve certainly anecdotally heard way more praise than criticism from games media, and friends of mine who are playing.
Obsidian have been on a pretty decent roll for quite some time. Avowed is exactly what Gamepass was seeking to support - smaller focused games, and it ain’t even that small. 30-50 hours from what I’m hearing.
I’m not even a massive fan of the genre, or the studio, but I don’t really get the negativity surrounding the game. Seems pretty successful by most metrics to me.
It’s fun. Has its clear limitations, so it’s not as broad as many rpgs, but what it does do, it pulls off well. The “gamers” being mad about the pronoun picker is the source of a lot of the derision as far as I can tell.
Have they released numbers yet? Surely it has sold pretty well, the word of mouth must be decent.
It “reached” almost 5 million players. They do not break down how many of those are purchased copies versus Game Pass subscribers. Here’s a handy trick that I’ve heard from devs though: your range for how many people purchased the game is somewhere between 20x and 70x the number of reviews it has. Most end up around 55; for the biggest successes like Elden Ring, it ends up being closer to 20. So about 363k copies sold on Steam, probably; reviews tend to come after someone’s done playing a game, after all.
Gamepass numbers are unknown, but steam had a peak of like 19k players. Estimates on ownership is around 200k units.
Monster Hunter Wilds had 1.3m peak, unknown sales estimate because it is too new. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, 256k peak, over 2m sales estimate.
Understand that is all PC Steam stats.
Avowed may only be a financial success thanks to gamepass because nobody is buying it.
I know I didn’t buy it; playing with my subscription. I wonder if MS keeps these titles at 70 to try to push people to subscribe to gamepass rather than choosing more competitive pricing
Hi-Fi Rush was $30 and Hellblade II was $50. I don’t know how they determine what each game ought to be worth, because Hi-Fi Rush was too low at $30, and Redfall was too high at $70.
They are wanting to raise new game prices to $90-100 because prices haven’t kept up with inflation and dev costs, which will push more people to game streaming or subscription services.
Avowed could have been $30 and still sold the same because a $30 game is priced like a mediocre or shit game when you are talking open world ARPGs not made in Asia or offered as early access. I don’t even think the nothingburger controversy did anything to the sales of meaning, it just doesn’t seem like an interesting game from the announcement trailer to the launch trailer. The coolest thing in the trailers was the magic and that is a pretty disappointing aspect of the game.
I agree with you, before this post, I was under the impression that Avowed has been a win.
Let’s hope we get some numbers soon.
if steam is any indication i would not call it a success: https://steamdb.info/app/2457220/charts/#max
Which part of “concurrent players on Steam” makes it a metric that determines if the game was a success?
not sure if the question is serious but anyway: stalker 2 was also on gamepass and had 120k concurrent users on steam while avowed had 20k.
it’s not really an indication considering it’s a gamepass title
ITS WOKE
What you are hearing is Microsoft sponsored cope. Anyone, having two neurons to rub together, who enjoyed past Obsidian games is overwhelmingly disappointed at how little interactivity the world has, how limited your interactions are and how insipid it is. If this is what gamepass is bringing to the table then it will inevitably fail because at this level of quality for first party it’s competing with mobile games on a much more accessible platform.
Edited to be more precise
I disagree, I’ve been enjoying it so far. I still think OW beats it out of the water though.
I’ve played most of Obsidian’s catalog at this point, and this game rules.
Good for you I guess, i too would have preferred to enjoy it. Sadly, too blasé to enjoy effortless mediocre stuff.
“Anyone who enjoyed past Obsidian games is overwhelmingly disappointed” just isn’t true, so don’t speak for others.
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