Fallout: New Vegas Studio Obsidian Is Reportedly Making a New Fallout Game

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft is cancelling an Avowed sequel and moving Obsidian Entertainment toward a new Fallout project as Xbox restructures around bigger, safer franchises.

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Obsidian Entertainment, the developer behind fan-favorite entry Fallout: New Vegas, is reportedly finally making its return to the Fallout universe.

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft is shifting the Xbox-owned studio toward a new Fallout game as part of the company’s broader restructuring of its gaming business. The report says the project will be led by Josh Sawyer, who previously directed Fallout: New Vegas and later worked on games such as Pillars of Eternity and Pentiment.

Notably, Microsoft employs a large number of visionaries from the very early PC days of the original Fallout series from Interplay as well. Brian Fargo is the founder of Interplay and was the executive producer on both Fallout 1 and 2. He now runs his latest studio, inXile Entertainment, as founder. Their upcoming game, Clockwork Revolution, looks like a spiritual successor of sorts to early CRPGs.

Plus, the original Fallout lead programmer, producer, and creator, Tim Cain, is actually back at Obsidian as of recently, with no details on what he's been working on. It could be this new Fallout game.

If the new report is accurate (Jason Schrier almost always is very accurate), it would mark one of the most significant Fallout developments in years. Rumors have circulated for quite some time about a Fallout: New Vegas remaster, but it seems like this would be a brand-new game. Chris Avellone, writer on New Vegas, doesn't think a remaster is a good idea. Perhaps it will be New Vegas 2, a game they originally tried to set up years ago with DLC.

Bethesda has not released a new mainline Fallout game since Fallout 76 in 2018, and the franchise’s next big moment has largely come from outside games, thanks to Amazon’s successful Fallout TV adaptation, unless you count the re-releases and ports of Fallout 4.

For Obsidian, the move would be especially notable because the studio’s history with Fallout has only grown more important over time. Fallout: New Vegas was released in 2010 as a Bethesda-published spin-off developed by Obsidian, and it remains one of the most beloved entries in the series. It is also the game most often cited by fans whenever the idea of Obsidian returning to Fallout comes up.

However, this news is colored by negativity all the same. Obsidian was recently hit with layoffs as part of the ongoing Xbox reset in effect by Microsoft, and the game the studio had been reportedly working on, a sequel to 2025's Avowed, is now canceled.

With Microsoft aiming to focus primarily on safer, legacy IPs for the foreseeable future, new projects, spin-offs, and more experimental releases will likely be shelved (many of which we probably never found out about). This also likely means Obsidian won't be returning to the Pillars of Eternity universe anytime soon.