My view, Outer Worlds will be an awesome game and:
- Would have have tremendous success (FNV level sales) due to it's quality and the hype-cannon that propelled it, but
- Will end with 'mediocre-OK' sales due to EPIC-exclusiveness and the negative-opinions that brought
RESULT: quality single-player-RPGs will continue to be niche and only come out with 3-5 year intervals because next-to-no publishers wants to risk the investment
The thing is single player RPG is a niche for a long time and no amount of success from Outer Worlds gonna change that.
Just look at Fallout 4, the game sells more than 30 million copies, and Bethesda spend the next three years making a online survival game. Witcher 3 make more money in 2017 than it did in 2016, it make CDPR being able to make 2 AAA titles at the same time, still they are adding multi-player in 2077.
These games comes out in 2015, in the next four years we barely see any mainstream RPGs, the only one come out is ME:A and its budget is only 40 million dollars, half of Witcher 3.
The market has proven that a single player RPG can be huge success, way bigger than any mediocre online game can ever be, but the companies simply don't want to make them anymore, they rather waste money on making shitty multi-player game.
Good news is that there seem to have more middle size single player RPG on the way.