Today marks the general launch of The Outer Worlds 2, a science-fiction role-playing game (RPG) from developer Obsidian Entertainment and publisher Xbox Game Studios.
It's the team's third game this year, following the fantasy RPG Avowed in February and the early access launch of survival title Grounded 2 in July. While it's been available for a few days for anyone that coughed up extra for the Premium Edition, the standard version of The Outer Worlds 2 is live now for everyone...at least in theory.
Unfortunately, if you aren't able to access The Outer Worlds 2 right now, you're not alone. An Azure outage has taken numerous services offline, including the ability for many people to buy games on Xbox.
Obsidian Entertainment directly confirmed on Bluesky that the outage is affecting the team's games, as well as other titles.
Due to an ongoing Azure service outage, The Outer Worlds 2 may be temporarily unavailable to purchase or install on Xbox Series X|S, the Xbox app on PC, and with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass.
— @obsidian.net (@obsidian.net.bsky.social) 2025-10-29T19:33:23.800Z
Your experience may differ slightly based on your location and the what part of Xbox online services you are attempting to use.
In addition to Xbox online connectivity and other Microsoft services like Office, Amazon Web Services is having some intermittent connection issues.
When you can jump in, The Outer Worlds 2 is worth playing
When services are back online, The Outer Worlds 2 is definitely a game worth playing, no matter if you enjoyed the first game or not.
Obsidian Entertainment cleverly combines crunchy role-playing elements with vastly-improved combat, leading to a best-of-both-worlds setup that already has me eager for a replay.
Because it takes place in a new solar system, you don't have to have played the first game in order to understand what's going on.
If you haven't yet, be sure to read my review of The Outer Worlds 2, where I wrote that "If you're a returning fan, diving into The Outer Worlds 2 is a no-brainer. If you were put off by the combat, then I'd still encourage you to give it a try, as the team has vastly improved the moment-to-moment gameplay without sacrificing anything else along the way."
The Outer Worlds 2 is currently available on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (Battle.net, Steam, and Xbox on PC), and PlayStation 5. Like all Xbox first-party games, it's available in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
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