Another Popular RPG Series May Return as an Xbox Series X Exclusive

Xbox has been slowly but surely locking down RPG series and the developers behind them. Between Bethesda Game Studios, Obsidian Entertainment, inXile Entertainment, and the new RPG studio at Playground Games, Xbox has some of the best RPG talent in the industry under its roof. As a result of this, RPG fans on PS5 will need to invest in an Xbox or a PC to play games and series like Starfield, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, The Outer Worlds, Wasteland, Fable, and whatever else the studios above cook up. To this end, if a third Pillars of Eternity game is ever made, it's presumably going to be an Xbox exclusive as Xbox owns Obsidian Entertainment. 

Is there any interest in bringing back the hardcore, old-school RPG series? Well, design director Josh Sawyer has suggested he would be down to bring the series back if it was given a similar budget to Baldur's Gate 3, a similar old-school RPG, but an RPG that was apparently made on a much larger budget than Pillars of Eternity. 

"I don't think I'd make Pentiment 2," said Sawyer speaking with Touch Arcade. "I really do feel very satisfied with that game. It's not like I don't wanna return to it ever, but I just did it, so I'd probably wait a little bit. I think if it truly was an unlimited budget, I think I would try Pillars of Eternity 3 because I know what the budget was for Deadfire, which was not a whole lot and I have heard from multiple people what the budget was for Baldur's Gate 3, and I'm not gonna talk about numbers, but if I got that budget, sure, I'll make Pillars 3."

Obviously, this is far from a commitment that the series is being brought back, but it's more than nothing. That said, Microsoft has inXile Entertainment for isometric RPGs, so it's hard to imagine it would let Obsidian Entertainment make one, especially with a hearty budget. And this may be music to the ears of fans of it on PS5 who have enjoyed the series on PlayStation consoles in the past but are unlikely to enjoy any future installments on any PlayStation machine.