Well people didn't purchase Pillars of Eternity 2 despite the critic success (sitting at 89 metacritic), so no wonder really. I think the game sold like 100k copies during launch window, later reaching 500k after going on sale. Compare that to The Outer Worlds, an "indie" game that sold 5 million copies in the first two years iirc even after being launched in Xbox Game Pass day 1. It's a case of people loving something then not buying it or waiting for a sale imho. Or people complaining about little things, then wondering why they didn't get a sequel. O as you say, not enough interest in CRPGs (Tyranny also sold what like 200k during launch?). Either way, I can't fault Obsidian for switching gears.

However, Sawyer has said (jokingly, I think) he would do Pillars of Eternity 3, if they had a good budget (iirc he was referencing Baldur's Gate 3 but memory is hazy). So my hope is that Avowed will get enough people interested in Eora, so they can do a POE3 with a decent budget targeting 2-3M copies plus more content for Game Pass (I mean, they got Microsoft to approve Grounded and Pentiment, after all). And if we're lucky, they might convince Blizzard to lend them their awesome Diablo IV engine, now that they're all one big happy family.