It seemed like the launch of Sandfall Interactive’s turn-based role-playing video game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, would have been negatively affected by the shadow drop of Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, but according to its publisher Kepler Interactive, this wasn’t the case, as the games’ simultaneous launch helped to boost excitement for the RPG genre with both titles benefitting as a result.
Speaking to The Game Business, Kepler Interactive’s senior portfolio manager Matt Handrahan explained how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 managed to beat the odds despite facing stiff competition from Bethesda’s highly anticipated remaster. The two games both launched in the same week, with the former released on 24 April and the latter two days earlier.
“We always knew that Expedition 33 had a very specific identity,” Handrahan noted. “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 [who] 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,” he added, “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.”
And its results speak for themselves, as Clair Obscur Expedition 33 has proven to be a big hit, soaring past one million copies sold within the first three days of launch while also gaining an all-time peak of 145,063 concurrent players on Steam at the time of writing, an impressive feat considering the relatively small size of its development team.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, on the other hand, has unsurprisingly seen its fair share of success as a remaster of such a classic title, with over four million players since launch and raking up an all-time peak of 216,784 concurrent players on Steam.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
Si Jia
