Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Launching Near Oblivion Remastered Didn't Harm Sales - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 May 2025 / 6,449 Views
Kepler Interactive, the publisher for the Sandfall Interactive developed Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, stated the release so close to the shadow drop of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered didn't harm the game.
"[During the Summer Showcase] our game was placed alongside Gears of War, Fable and products that are very traditionally known as AAA product," said Kepler senior portfolio director Matt Handrahan in an interview with The Game Business.
"It let people understand what it was in a way that I think we would've struggled to do if we weren't allied with Xbox in that way. We couldn’t have done it through a Steam demo alone, for example. It helped us to kind of claim this AA territory in a much more confident way. Because it's a vague space that exists somewhere between small games and extremely big games, and there's a lot of ground that that covers."
Handrahan added, "We always knew that Expedition 33 had a very specific identity. 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 has gone on to sell over one million units. It released for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, and Xbox Game Pass on April 24.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Bluesky.
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I probably did.... but they still were very successful. Its just the degree of success would have been even bigger, if Oblivion didn't launch right ontop of it.
I believe this guy believes this, mainly because I think the game has sold well above their own expectations. I know more people that bought this than Oblivion but those people were interested before Oblivion Remaster was even a rumour.
I don't. The partnership with Xbox was fine, good promotion but Bethesda dropping Oblivion just before would have affected sales. I'm sure there were many who would have dropped money on the end of April big release (like nothing else was out), suddenly OBLIVION, OUT NOW! and they drop the money for it but are unlikely to drop more 2 days later when really, the word of mouth and scores E33 was getting means they would have.
However, I do hope they didn't undersell for GP money.
I don't think the game has a "large" crossover... but it isn't zero either
With both games being $50, I just bought them both right away
Now with the gta6 delay. I might be able to fit it in my playtime schedule.
One could say both games boosted each others sales and players number (both on Game Pass) based off the excitement for some quality RPGs, especially with both being very different RPGs.
Congrats to the devs. This wasn't at all on my radar, but bought it due to the positive reception. I only average a few early days purchases a year.
It hurt sales there's no way it didn't. Now it didn't destroy the game but I don't believe for one second it didn't hurt the sales of this game. How much? Who knows could have been very little or a lot. Very hard to measure something like this.
Yeah right coz putting it on game pass "helped" sales numbers and then bethesda randomly choosing a day near the indie games release date truly "helped" sales numbers that's for sure
