After unanimous praise from critics, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has become one of the big surprise hits of the year.
It’s easy to be pessimistic about the state of the games industry in 2025, between the glut of live service games and how so few people are actually playing new titles, so it’s reassuring when games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 find success.
Developed by Sandfall Interactive, a team made of ex-Ubisoft devs, the French turn-based role-playing game is the debut title from the studio and an original IP. Better yet, as outlined in our review, it’s pretty fantastic.
While critical acclaim doesn’t guarantee sales success, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has got off to a strong start in that respect too.
As announced by Sandfall Interactive on X, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has sold 1 million copies after three days. The game launched across PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S on Thursday, April 24.
While the difference between copies sold and player counts is always a bit squiffy, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows, an anticipated game from one of the biggest franchises, racked up two million players after two days – so for a new IP, Clair Obscur is doing very well indeed.
As noted by the developers, there is the caveat that this number doesn’t include players on Xbox Game Pass, so the overall player count will be higher. ‘This number includes units shipped to retailers, and does not encompass our awesome Game Pass players. Thank you all,’ they added.
The game’s had a strong launch on Steam too. Over the weekend (via SteamDB), Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 hit a peak concurrent player count of 121,422.
While this isn’t exactly Monster Hunter Wilds, or even Oblivion Remastered numbers, when compared to other role-playing games of the same ilk, like Metaphor ReFantazio (85,961) and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth (40,564), it’s pretty impressive.
In fact, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s concurrent player numbers on Steam are higher than any Final Fantasy game ever. The closest is Final Fantasy 14 Online, which hit a peak of 95,150 in 2022.
While the majority of the Final Fantasy games came to PC after launching on console, it’s still a notable achievement for an original IP in the same Japanese role-playing mould.
This success practically guarantees a sequel, although it’s still unclear what kind of budget was thrown behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Along with its impressive visuals, it features a pretty stacked English voice cast, including Daredevil’s Charlie Cox and Andy Serkis from The Lord Of The Rings.
Whoever backed the studio, their risk has paid off since, as of right now, the game is also the best reviewed game of 2025 on Metacritic, beating Blue Prince and Split Fiction.
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