Are these the biggest problems that held Pillars 2 back then? Marketing and localization?
While as an Obsidian developer and secret owner, Nick is biased, there's a point to be made in that a critically well-received game didn't achieve the numbers it probably deserved - and that deserves examination.
Marketing (as a tool of evil) is there to make you
want to buy a product where no such
want may have existed, and here's the kicker: they are there to make you want it even before you experience the gameplay. So gameplay decisions that are off-putting are often realized after the sale... but still, word-of-mouth and player feedback then work as a marketing campaign in themselves once an initial wave of players has purchased a title and can now react to it.
But yes, the marketing component should be examined - and when you see Versus Evil's track record with titles like Banner Saga 2, you see there's a problem there, but then again, Obs. also had a marketing dept. that didn't hit the expected numbers, either (to be clear, while it's easy to blame Paradox for Pillars and Tyranny, I had a chance to speak with the marketing devs at PDX about both titles, and both mentioned that Obs. was the one guiding those products in terms of marketing - Obs. was the one in charge, they were the ones making the trailers, the game box covers, etc. and PDX was there to facilitate that to the point where the PDX people I spoke to had surrendered to the developer, so I feel it's wrong to blame them vs. the process they had to surrender to).
Also, when PoE2 didn't hit the hoped-for numbers, Obs. did terminate their head of marketing as a result (this isn't drama, it was a pre-existing goal set into the hiring contract, as I understand it).
And, to give Techland a nod, the story trailer for Numenera I thought was pretty great for condensing a lot of not-so-easy-to-condense ideas into something interesting for a gamer.
But in terms of going their own way, Obsidian vs. marketing at other companies, though, Obsidian's (and esp. Chris Parker's) approach has always been, "we know better than you":
Even for the GDC reveal for Tyranny, Obsidian chose to go their own way in promoting the product (for good or ill) which obviously wasn't part of the PDX line-up aesthetic, you can feel the disconnect when you watch the videos of it... Obsidian felt they should market the game's announcement differently, and chose to take it into their own hands. I thought it was jarring in terms of watching the line-up from start to finish, but if you take it by itself, it's not bad... but the problem? The audience didn't perceive it as its own thing.
Localization: You need to respect the rest of the world.
Localization on PoE2 was pretty bad, for sure, but I think even the game's localizers indicated the challenges with that on the Obsidian forums (you can't localize properly when you get an XML text dump of verbs and nouns from the game that are intended to be stitched together).
As a counter example, the FTL localizers had a whole thread on Twitter about how they localized FTL b/c they genuinely had the freedom to care, to adapt, and then even suggest UI changes they thought would convey the terminology of the game systems better: And almost no developer gives or thinks to give a localization company that kind of "power" over the game, nor does the localization company often have the freedom to suggest such things. It's one of the reasons I love Subset games, and have worked with them repeatedly.
It's a complicated issue, and I think MS can help with both... with the caveat that "if it's convenient for them".
What I mean by that is that being part of a larger organization, a lot of elements considered for quality, for attention, or for support may be sidelined or lost if you're going up against Blockbuster V or VI, and there's the rub: It's out of your control.
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