Obsidian future includes XBLA, licensed IP

With the release of Dungeon Siege III on May 31, Obsidian Entertainment will have successfully launched three new titles in under a year (the other two being Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas). However, as revealed by Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart in a recent interview with Game Revolution, that period of concentrated activity won't result in much downtime for the independent shop.

According to Urquhart, Obsidian will dive into the downloadable hemisphere during the first quarter of 2012 with an original Xbox Live Arcade title. Though he offered no word on its name, he said the title will be an action role-playing game with a "focus on fun." He also said that it will be quite different from the action RPG elements found in Dungeon Siege, saying that it will be set "set in a different genre with a different camera."

Urquhart also said that Obsidian is at work on a licensed IP. "There actually is another game that I can't talk about at all," he said. "It's a licensed product that when people hear about it, they're going to be 'well you had to do that. There's no option, if I was a developer and I was offered that, I would just do it.'"

Urquhart did not offer a time frame or any other indication as to what that licensed property may be. However, he did say that an announcement for the title may come as soon as the 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo in June.

The Obsidian head also speculated on games that his studio would like to work on.

"There's nothing that's been moved forward, but we'd love to develop Dungeon Siege 4," he said. "On the flip side, I think as a studio we have some original ideas and stories to tell. We have a great idea for a new world we've just started pitching to publishers, and we have an older pitch that we really like called 'Defiance,' which is about a fantasy world where, basically, Sauron won. Everything isn't happy in The Shire, they didn't get the ring in the fire, and the hobbits are all dead. We think that's a cool pitch and we hope to have a publisher pick that up at some point."

"We also might throw our hat in the whole free-to-play thing," he continued. "In the game industry, there's a lot of different opportunities for all different kinds of products."

For more on Obsidian's latest project, check out GameSpot's previous coverage of Dungeon Siege 3.