I´m afraid we can soon add Obsidian or Inxile after the adquisition by Microsoft.
I can´t really fathom why so many CRPG fans spend their time in pointless debates like PC vs Console, 2d vs 3D, RTwP vs TB, etc when the real problem of the lack of non-indie western RPGs today is that many great studios are bought and repurposed into making FPS games.
We shall see. I will not be a speaker of doom, before I see what Obsidian and Inxile are up to with Microsoft funding. Some people point to Outer Worlds as a sign of decline, but 1) it's good for what it is 2) has nothing to do with aquisition - that is a project which predates the buyout and is made with Private Division, not Microsoft.
I suppose the problem is that RPGs are complex, ambitious and expensive games to make. Larian seems to be the first studio I can think of, that makes RPGs independently and seems to be succesful. Though, D:OS was close to falling apart business wise from what I understand. There is also CDPR. I am curious to see how long they will prosper.
Obsidian and Troika were not success stories, even if they made games that dedicated RPG fans adore. And RPGs of old were made under a publisher - a publisher which released some of the finest RPGs and then shut down.
And as to publisher's influence. To me, the most tragic bit of Kotaku's Anthem
article was that it was Bioware itself which did harm, rather then overbearing hand of a publisher. Still, screw EA.
