Just a few days after developer Sandfall Interactive announced that RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 had sold more than 2 million copies, Larian Studios publishing director Michael Douse has taken to social media platform X to congratulate the French developer. In his post, Douse also predicts that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is going to be even more popular as time passes, and eventually maybe even surpassing 8 to 10 million copies sold.
“I hope now word of mouth is in control it can reach its potential,” wrote Douse about the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. “And I say that in support of the developers and their incredible achievement. It has the potential to reach a conservative 6 [million copies sold], at least. Could top 8-10.”
In the sales figure announcement from earlier this month, our coverage also noted that the game had a strong first week in terms of commercial performance. According to Alinea Analytics, it had sold more than 785,000 copies on Steam alone at the time, doubling the first-week sales figures we had previously seen with major RPG releases like Metaphor: ReFantazio and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
While some questions arose about the commercial performance of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 being harmed by it being released so closely with the surprise drop of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, publisher Kepler Interactive’s senior portfolio manager Matt Handrahan believes that it didn’t harm the French studio’s RPG at all.
In an interview, Handrahan spoke about how he believes the release of Oblivion Remastered helped to raise the profile of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. According to him, this came down to the fact that more players were discussing RPGs and looking for more games in the genre that would suit their tastes. Handrahan also brings up the fact that players that prefer Oblivion Remastered’s style of real-time gameplay might not enjoy Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s turn-based approach to combat.
“We always knew that Expedition 33 had a very specific identity,” Handrahan said. “When I was in the press, I saw the Western-style RPG and the Japanese-style RPG as having quite different appeals and audiences. I knew plenty of people that would play an Elder Scrolls game that wouldn’t necessarily play Final Fantasy and vice versa.”
“Also, by the time that we rolled around, we had momentum of our own and we felt pretty confident that we could stand beside it. I think there were other aspects, like the price point we were at and the inclusion in Game Pass… so we knew we would have a lot of interest around the game. We were confident in that. And it went as well as it possibly could have done in our eyes. And, actually, proximity to Oblivion didn’t seem to harm us at all. In many ways, I think it just drew attention to quality RPGs that week and everybody was thinking and talking about the genre.”
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The title is also available through PC and Xbox Game Pass. Check out our review for more details.
