Obsidian Entertainment was developing a role-playing game called Stormlands for the launch of Xbox One that was ultimately canceled, and studio CEO Fergus Urquhart has come forward to reveal why Microsoft scrapped the project

Loading

"It comes down to budget and it comes down to having a champion [at Microsoft]," Urquhart said on the latest episode of our monthly interview show IGN Unfiltered . "I can see games that had champions and weren't canceled until $80 million were spent.... There's games that had a $10 million budget and had a champion and ended up the budget was $60 million and it shipped."Urquhart went on to explain that when you're making a big-budget game, "there has to be someone at the publisher" who can defend the project and assure the higher-ups the game is going to be good. In the case of Stormlands, unfortunately, Obsidian didn't have someone like that to champion the game at Microsoft."There has to be someone with that attitude and the ability to defend the game," he added, using Baldur's Gate as an example of how important it was for them to have someone to champion the game at Interplay when poor European sales forecasts were going to negatively impact its success in American markets. "For a game to truly be big, it often has to be pushed and it has to have ads and PR," he explained.Urquhart concluded by saying: "Why did Stormlands get canceled? Stormlands got canceled because we didn't have an advocate."Don't miss our full IGN Unfiltered interview with Urquhart, during which the Obsidian CEO discusses Black Isle's Fallout 3 that never released, as well as a Paris Hilton boss battle that was ultimately cut from South Park: The Stick of Truth.

Alex Osborn is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter and subscribe to his YouTube channel.