Though I guess it sold well enough that supposedly there will be a sequel, so maybe that's why they're doing this.

There is hunger for bethesda-like games but beth is trash at making them now. Expanding on the work they did in the first title along with their internal tools until they're at feature-parity is a good path to competing with them. The Outer Worlds team are more creative than Bethesda, they created a legitimately new IP with lore and likeable characters and story which is something Bethesda utterly failed at with Starfield.