Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment would have collected an unspecified bonus if the 2010 role-playing game scored an 85 on aggregate review site Metacritic, according to cofounder Chris Avellone. It scored an 84. Obsidian missed a bonus by one Metacritic point, according to Avellone.

　　"[Fallout: New Vegas] was a straight payment, no royalties, only a bonus if we got an 85+ on Metacritic, which we didn't," Avellone wrote on Twitter.

　　While the Xbox 360 and PC versions of Fallout: New Vegas received an 84 Metacritic score, the PlayStation 3 scored an 82.

　　Avellone's statement was in response to a user suggesting that Fallout: New Vegas was a moneymaker for the developer. A Bethesda representative declined comment.

　　This news comes just a day after reports that as many as 30 Obsidian staffers had been let go from teams working on a cancelled mystery next-generation project and the South Park role-playing game.

　　Kotaku reports that the next-gen project--codenamed "North Carolina"--was to be published by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 successor. A source told the site the team had been working on the mystery project for seven months and that Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart "choked up" when addressing the company about the cancellation of the project.

　　Joystiq's source suggested that "North Carolina" was "desperately needed" for the continued survival of the studio.

　　Metacritic and GameSpot are both owned by CBS Interactive.