Obsidian CEO Says It Doesn't Plan On Expanding Too Much Under Microsoft
More resources doesn't mean Feargus Urquhart wants giant teams.
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Obsidian Entertainment has found a new home in the Xbox stable of studios, but that doesn't mean the developer will be expanding in size anytime soon. Despite the Microsoft support, it sounds like CEO Feargus Urquhart wants to keep things on a relatively smaller scale.
Speaking at a recent event to press, Urquhart said that while the studio's been on an upward trend since Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian doesn't plan on going above a 200-employee benchmark.
"Are teams going to be a little larger? Yes," Urquhart says. "Are we going to have a larger outsourcing budget? Yes. I mean, Assassin's Creed is awesome, all of those games are awesome, but I don't think we need to compete with numbers."
Obsidian has operated for a while as a smaller team, though it had some tough times around Pillars of Eternity after Fallout writer Chris Avellone brought some studio failings to light. Hopefully under Microsoft and Xbox, Obsidian is finding a more stable platform and less issues.
Last month, Obsidian designer Brian Hines told Wccftech that the studio is focusing more on games, rather than pitching ideas. The Outer Worlds is the first of that bunch, a Fallout-style sci-fi RPG that received good praise, and today Obsidian revealed its next project, the shrunken survival game Grounded, at the X019 press conference. Though it's juggling multiple projects, it sounds like Urquhart wants to keep things small at Obsidian Entertainment, even under a massive umbrella like Microsoft's.
"I don't want to do thousand-person teams," Urquhart says.