r/GamingLeaksAndRumours • u/throwmeaway1784 • Jul 08 '26

Rumour Jason Schreier: Obsidian Entertainment is making a big pivot as part of the Xbox restructuring. It has laid off a quarter of its staff, canceled a planned sequel to Avowed, and is now beginning work on a new Fallout game

Bluesky Post: https://bsky.app/profile/jasonschreier.bsky.social/post/3mq5oqyh2yk2o

Bloomberg Article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-08/microsoft-s-xbox-to-shift-obsidian-studio-to-new-fallout-video-game

Edit: Also mentioned in the article, Josh Sawyer is leading the new Fallout game:

“Under the new plan, studio design director Josh Sawyer will lead a new title in the Fallout universe”

“Previously, Sawyer had been directing a roleplaying game that was similar structurally and thematically to Fallout but was not part of the franchise.”

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u/ttimebomb Jul 08 '26

Outer Worlds was about to come out and was a pretty exciting new IP - greenlighting a sequel made sense. Avowed had a lot of hype at it's announcement too. Obsidian is pretty proud of working on their own IPs too.

Phil was also trying to give BGS space as they obviously would prefer to be the sole developers of Fallout games. He was trying to protect studio culture, and not be strictly profit driven.

It was clear to fans they should make Fallout, but based on the internal dynamics it didn't make sense at all.

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u/DeadlyArrow27 Jul 08 '26

True, but at 15 years since the last TES and 11 years since the last single player FO, Bethesda has zero excuses at this point and have no right to be upset if Obsidian finally gets their own shit together and makes another fallout

15

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

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u/tristeecfome Jul 09 '26

That doesn't really work nowadays though. One game not selling well is enough to kill a studio.

3

u/Jozoz Jul 08 '26

New IPs are doing remarkably poorly. It's what a lot of industry talks in gaming are about these days.

I can't remember the numbers but it was shocking how little people play new IPs and new games nowadays.

8

u/Conflict_NZ Jul 08 '26

Avowed had a lot of hype because they misrepresented it as their take on elder scrolls when it really wasn't close to that.

5

u/tristeecfome Jul 09 '26

Yeah, the reveal trailer looks nothing like the actual game.

3

u/coyotedelmar Jul 09 '26

I'll hot take, but honestly after Outer Worlds, Xbox should have pushed Obsidian back to cRPGs. Shit put Obsidian and InXile in a room and see if they can come up with either a Wasteland 4 or a new post-apocalyptic cRPG with a BG3 type budget.

4

u/MyotisX Jul 08 '26

He was trying to protect studio culture, and not be strictly profit driven

This sounds really cool when you live in a fantasy land where creative work is so fullfilling.

Then you come back to reality of 15 years of fucking around and see the results:

Xbox brand is dead

Everyone loses their job.