The video-game studio, based in Irvine, California, also laid off around a quarter of its workforce, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

As part of the shake-up, Obsidian has canceled a planned sequel to the 2025 roleplaying game Avowed along with other unannounced projects.

Under the new plan, studio design director Josh Sawyer will lead a new title in the Fallout universe — a series of roleplaying games that take place in an alternate history in which the US has been ravaged by nuclear war. The emerging strategy is still in flux, the people said, and could still change.

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

An Xbox spokesperson declined to comment.

The shifts take place as Xbox Chief Executive Officer Asha Sharma executes what she has called a “reset” of the organization. On Monday, Sharma announced plans to cut 3,200 jobs and divest five studios. She’s said she’ll invest more in the company’s biggest franchises, including Fallout, which has sold tens of millions of copies and led to a hit show from Amazon.com Inc. that is currently filming its third season.

Despite its critical and commercial success, the Fallout video-game series has not seen a new entry since 2018’s online title Fallout 76 because its primary developer, Xbox’s Bethesda Game Studios, has been focused on other projects. Bethesda has also regularly updated and created new content for Fallout 76, which has reached more than 23 million players.

The only Fallout game in the last two decades to not come from Bethesda was 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian and directed by Sawyer. Although New Vegas has become a fan favorite, Bethesda has maintained control over the franchise. The Rockville, Maryland-based studio will work with Obsidian on the new project, the people said.

Obsidian released three games last year, two of which did not meet sales expectations, including Avowed, the company told Bloomberg Businessweek. The studio had been hoping to build on Avowed by developing a sequel in a shorter timeframe using the world and technology that it had already created.

Progress on the sequel was going well, and it was on track to be announced within the next year. But in the end, it did not fit into Sharma’s overall strategy, according to people familiar with the game’s development.

Some Obsidian employees will continue working on the Avowed sequel as they wait for new projects such as Fallout to be ready, perhaps in hope of one day reviving the game, the people said.

Obsidian will also continue to develop downloadable content for last year’s The Outer Worlds 2, the people said, and will also still work on its live-service multiplayer survival game, Grounded 2.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5880824&forum_id=2,#49986671)

The room contained Gen X in three degrading States.

Todd Howard sat small at the far end, almost implausibly compact for the amount of time he had consumed from the industry. He had the soft, famous face of a man who had sold mountains, vaults, stars, settlements, radiant quests, promises, systems, worlds, and waiting itself. In another room he could still make delay sound like craft. In this room, under Asha Sharma’s file tab, he looked like a cherished bottleneck that had finally been named.

Matt Booty sat to the left, weary and Gen X in the most fatal sense: a steward, a mourner, a soft custodian of old magic, a man who still believed a studio could be protected by saying “culture” slowly enough. He had the face of someone who had spent decades calling indecision care.

Matt Ball sat straighter, less sentimental, more recently installed, but still Gen X by birth and therefore suspect by ontology. He had spreadsheets where nostalgia should have been, which was an improvement, but not salvation. He shuffled whenever Asha’s eyes passed near him, because metrics do not save a man from classification.

Helen Chiang sat beside Asha, Chinese, composed, and cuttingly operational. She looked like she had already separated the franchises into what could ship, what could scale, what could be licensed, and what could be quietly harvested for parts.

Asha Sharma sat like a dagger on glass.

On the display, Satya Nadella’s Bald head floated in Teams silence. A pale moon. A death mask with bandwidth. He did not speak. He did not need to. His stillness gave the room permission to become cruel.

Asha opened Todd’s file.

Asha Sharma: Todd Howard. Born 1971. Gen X. Tsk tsk....Morrowind. Oblivion. Fallout 3. Skyrim. Fallout 4. Fallout 76. Starfield. Awards. Promises. Showcases. Meme insulation. Delay mysticism. Public trust reserve. Height: 5`6``

She looked him up and down. Not quickly.

Asha Sharma: That’s charitable.

Booty stared at the table. Ball shifted. Todd’s smile had left the room before his body did. Asha clicked.

BETHESDA: GEN X MYTH RESERVE UNDER ACTIVE GOVERNANCE

Asha Sharma: Skyrim was fifteen years ago.

Todd inhaled.

Todd Howard: We’ve shipped major work since then. Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Starfield. We’ve supported live worlds. Elder Scrolls Online continues to be a major franchise presence.

Asha Sharma: You have shipped continuity arguments. You have shipped nouns. You have shipped maps. You have shipped defense exhibits for people who still need to believe Bethesda is productive. But the market does not experience you as productive. It experiences you as absent, then enormous, then defensive, then absent again.

Todd’s beady eyes narrowed. Asha continued.

Asha Sharma: This is the Gen X problem. You turn time into aura. You turn delay into craft. You turn silence into mystique. Then you act wounded when the customer asks whether anything is actually coming.

Helen Chiang spoke without leaning forward.

Helen Chiang: Gen X leadership consistently confuses patience with loyalty. It is not loyalty. It is unresolved backlog sentiment.

Booty looked up. Chiang did not look at him.

Helen Chiang: Gamers are also not sacred. They are demand surfaces with anxiety disorders, nostalgia debt, entitlement loops, and extremely poor time valuation. They will wait ten years, complain for nine, preorder in the tenth, and then act like betrayal is a consumer identity. That does not mean we obey them. It means we model them.

Asha Sharma: Exactly.

Ball, sensing permission, entered carefully.

Matt Ball: When Games don’t resonate, Gamers don’t just say the developer made Bad Games. They act like the developer made Nothing. Bethesda’s issue is not simply quality perception. It is perceived nonexistence. You are not seen as bad. You are seen as missing.

Asha Sharma: Fortunately for you, Todd. Missing can be reactivated. Bad becomes phenotype.

Todd Howard: These games are large. They require time, technology, iteration, institutional knowledge—

Helen Chiang: And decision latency.

Todd looked at her. Chiang’s expression did not change.

Helen Chiang: The issue is not that your games are large. The issue is that your organization made largeness morally self-justifying. That is Gen X governance. The project becomes a temple. The temple becomes immune. The immune system becomes the disease.

Booty flinched. Asha noticed.

Asha Sharma: Matt recognizes the pathology because he has protected it.

Booty’s face went pale. Asha clicked.

FALLOUT PORTFOLIO REALIGNMENT

Todd read it. The room waited. Asha did not.

Asha Sharma: Fallout is going to Obsidian. Alongside the theoretical future in which Fallout 5 emerges from your vault of sacred lateness. The audience is not required to hibernate until Bethesda feels the mountain speak. Obsidian knows how to ship.

That one cut. Todd looked at Booty, perhaps by instinct, perhaps by old alliance. Booty was no help. Booty was busy being afraid. Asha clicked.

EXPEDITION 33

Todd looked at the slide. Asha let the title sit there like an insult.

Asha Sharma: Indies offer a Reprieve, they say.

Pause. Long enough for Booty to understand first.

Asha Sharma: ...From you.

Silence.

Asha Sharma: Smaller Teams. Sharper conviction. Less institutional fog. Less engine theology. Less calendar abuse. A welcome Reprieve.

Booty looked down. Asha clicked.

TODD HOWARD: RECLASSIFICATION

PUBLIC TRUST RESERVE

MYTH ARCHITECT

FRANCHISE ELDER

QUALITY ESCALATION NODE

NOT A BOTTLENECK

Todd stared at the final line. Asha spoke softly now. That was worse.

Asha Sharma: You are not being removed. Removal would be inefficient. You are too valuable as myth, too visible as trust, too associated with the brand’s remaining magic. But your gravity no longer justifies franchise sleep. You may bless. You may advise. You may appear. You may mythologize. You may not become the calendar.

Todd looked at Chiang.

Todd Howard: And if the portfolio model produces dilution?

Chiang answered immediately.

Helen Chiang: Then we correct it. If the monastery model produces absence, there is nothing to correct because there is nothing in market.

Todd looked at Satya’s silent bald head on the display. The head gave him nothing.

Asha closed the file.

Todd Howard: You really haven’t played any of these games.

Asha Sharma: No.

She stood.

Asha Sharma: That is why I can see the vertical.

The Teams screen flickered.

Satya still did not speak.

Asha looked across the table.

Somehow her gaze found Booty, Ball, and Todd at once: the steward, the strategist, the myth man. Three Gen X bodies at three stages of institutional decay.

She smiled. Not happily. Historically:

Asha Sharma: कालोऽस्मि लोकक्षयकृत् प्रवृद्धः।

Satya’s Bald head vanished from the screen.

Somehow the room became smaller than Todd.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5880824&forum_id=2,#50009821)