Well, a lot of this is just an opinion and a matter of taste. But for me, the difference is clear: Obsidian makes conceptually good but technically flawed games (although, for the record, I didn’t much like PoE). That’s not ideal, but the thing with technical issues is that they are mostly fixable. Also, technical issues are something I can deal with if the game is otherwise great. Technically, a lot of GoaTs / GOTYs were a mess: Deus Ex was a disaster, The Witcher was also deeply flawed, and the less is said about Cyberpunk’s release state the better. But once these are polished, what you’re left with are great games.
On the other hand, Bethesda makes technically more or less perfectly functioning games, but they are (for me at least) bland, boring and samey. Which is *not* something that you can easily fix.
In the end, I enjoyed F:NV more than anything from Bethesda’s kitchen, even with all the crashes (I played it unmodded on an old system so it crashed like once every few hours). And I don’t think I’m the only one.
For a split second, I read this as “MS is investing in AI in games”. Oh well, one can dream…