The surprise release of Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered hasn’t impacted the sales of French JRPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, its publisher has said.
Sandfall Interactive’s game was released last week from publisher Kepler and with support from Xbox, but some feared any success would be overshadowed by the Oblivion release that leaked ahead of time.
However, Kepler’s senior portfolio director Matt Handrahan has drawn a distinction between the two games, adding “proximity to Oblivion didn’t seem to harm us at all”.
“We always knew that Expedition 33 had a very specific identity,” Handrahan told The Game Business. “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.”
According to data from Ampere, there’s a 35 percent crossover between the two RPGs. On Xbox in particular – the number one platform for both games – 55 percent of Clair Obscur players also played Oblivion. Both games were available on Xbox Game Pass at launch.
This crossover percentage drops to 22 percent for Steam players, and 16 percent on PS5. However, average playtime on Xbox has been lower – likely due to players dipping in on Game Pass.
Handrahan revealed Kepler didn’t sign Clair Obscur straight away, but could see the potential of its battle system.
“My CEO, Alexis Garavaryan, had the most contact with them at [an early stage],” said Handrahan. “He saw the potential in it, but thought there were still some parts that needed a little bit more work. So Sandfall went away, did that work, came back, and on the second time of seeing it, our response was extremely, extremely quick.”
When another publisher started looking at the game, Kepler had already snapped it up. “We were straight on top of it,” said Handrahan. “If you find a game you like, if you find a game that excites you, you really have to act quickly. There’s a lot of good games, but the really remarkable stuff comes along relatively rarely.”
He also spoke to the game’s promotion during Xbox’s Summer Showcase alongside the likes of AAA first party games Gears of War and Fable. “It helped us to kind of claim this AA territory in a much more confident way,” said Handrahan. “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.”
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 hit 500,000 sales in just one day, which quickly rose to a million copies in three days.
“Outstanding artwork and glorious combat bring Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s bold, painterly world to life,” reads Eurogamer’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review.