Shortly after the Xbox Game’s Showcase the other day, Obsidian’s upcoming RPG sequel The Outer Worlds 2 also got its own showcase. It was a strong showing for what’s looking to be a very fun game. However, it’s also going to be Xbox’s first official $80 following Microsoft’s announcement last month that it was going to start increasing the RRP for some of its games.
Following the showcase, pre-orders went live for The Outer Worlds 2 and store listings confirmed the $80/£70 price-tag. Steam, for example, has pre-orders up, and you can also find it on both the Xbox and PlayStation stores for the same price.
There’s also a more expensive version available if you fancy shelling out $100.
Of course, The Outer Worlds 2 will also launch straight onto Game Pass, so if you’re a PC or Xbox gamer that’s the more cost-effective way of playing.
What I find interesting is that this is the first game on the Xbox side to get the price hike. When announcing the increase, Microsoft said they would raise the price of “some of our new, first-party games starting this holiday season to $79.99.”
To me, that implied the big triple-A titles. The Outer Worlds, though, was a relatively small, double-A kind of RPG when it released, and while the sequel does seem bigger and probably has a chunkier budget, I’m not sure people are going to view it as the kind of game that can get away with an $80 RRP.
It’s not a bad thing that The Outer Worlds 2 looks more like a double-A title, either. In fact, that’s what Obsidian are good at. Both the industry as a whole and Game Pass specifically need more of these smaller games that don’t have absurd budgets and hefty price-tags. We need games covering a wider range of prices, rather than just being “indie” or $80.
Now, in fairness, we haven’t been given the budget behind The Outer Worlds 2, so this could be Obsidian trying to step into the triple-A space with a bigger, punchier RPG, but while the game does look very pretty, nothing in the showcase gave me that kind if vibe. No, it looks more polished than the last few Obsidian games, and I’m super-hyped to play it because I loved The Outer Worlds, but still falls into the double-A category from what I’ve seen.
In short, The Outer Worlds 2 seems like a peculiar choice to be leading Xbox’s charge toward a new standard price-point. When they said “some” games would be increasing to $80, I assumed they meant big-hitters like the upcoming Fable perhaps, or the next Gears of War or Halo. But The Outer Worlds was already a fairly niche game. Now, Xbox wants to place is sequel as the cannon-fodder on the frontline of the $80 war.