Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 publisher says Oblivion Remastered launch didn't harm sales

In early previews, a lot of players knew that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was going to be one of the main talking points of April 2025. However, then came The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, and it seemed that perhaps people would choose their old favourite RPG over the newer release from Sandfall Interactive.

This turned out not to be the case, though, as Kepler Interactive senior portfolio director Matt Handrahan told The Game Business that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 may have even been helped by the Oblivion Remastered launch.

"It went as well as it possibly could have done in our eyes," he said. "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."

Handrahan also spoke about how Xbox helped raise the game's profile. "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," he said. "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."

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 did launch on Xbox Game Pass, but has still managed to sell more than a million copies despite being part of a subscription model. It's difficult to say whether it would have seen the same success without being tied to Xbox in its promotion, but it appears that the game's publisher Kepler Interactive is pleased with the collaboration.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is out now on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC.