When The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered was finally revealed after weeks of leaks, many RPG fans began to worry for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Clair Obscur was a brand-new RPG released just days after the Oblivion remaster, and the concern was that Oblivion would swallow up all the attention from Clair Obscur. On the outside, it looked like Xbox had screwed Clair Obscur in a big way.
That was not the case, as Clair Obscur surpassed one million copies sold days after its launch, and is one of the best-rated games of 2025 so far.
A report from The Game Business showed that not only did Clair Obscur not get swallowed up by Oblivion, but the two seemingly helped each other. Both games were available on Xbox Game Pass, so it’s not a surprise that, per Ampere Analysis’ data, the majority of players for both Oblivion and Clair Obscur were Xbox players.
What is interesting, though, is that 55% of players who played Clair Obscur on Xbox also played Oblivion. 35% of all Expedition 33 players also played Oblivion, showing huge overlap between the two. As Kelper Interactive’s portfolio manager Matt Handrahan told The Game Business, “I think it just drew attention to quality RPGs that week.”
“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.“
Handrahan also spoke about how Clair Obscur’s inclusion in the Xbox’s summer showcase ahead of the game’s release was a major help.
“[During the Summer Showcase] our game was placed alongside Gears of War, Fable and products that are very traditionally known as AAA products,” Handrahan said.
“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.“
Xbox’s support in the showcase is a clear help to Clair Obscur, but it’s more interesting and hopeful to see that the shadow drop of such a massive RPG was able to help catapult the release of a new entry to the genre.
