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Is Clair Obscur Expedition 33 the most unexpected surprise of the year so far? Blue Prince is certainly a contender, but hasn’t quite hit the dizzying sales and player count heights. Conversely, something like Schedule 1 has exploded out of nowhere, but isn’t going to be scooping up end-of-year awards. When it comes to being the complete surprise package, I think Expedition 33 takes it. The game is so popular that on Steam, despite it being a fresh IP and a debut game from a small studio, it has reportedly sold faster than some of the most notable JRPGs of the last 12 months, such as Metaphor Refantazio and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
I continue to be amazed with just how well-received Clair Obscur Expedition 33 has been. French studio Sandfall Interactive took a huge swing at the turn-based, narrative-driven RPG action that Japanese studios have been nailing for years and hit a home run. It’s clearly been performing extremely well – Steam player counts have been consistently high, it shifted over 500,000 copies in its first 24 hours or so, and has gone on to blast past a million sales in total. And that’s with it being one of the best Game Pass games too.
Now, a market analytics firm has revealed some more data that puts Expedition 33’s success, on Steam at least, into context. While some of these titles admittedly have large console fan bases, and some are ports that arrived on Steam a while after launch, the likes of Metaphor Refantazio, Persona 5 Royal, Persona 3 Reload, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Like a Dragon 8 have all been dwarfed in the first-week sales department.
Alinea Analytics’ Rhys Elliott says that Clair Obscur Expedition 33 has been selling at least twice as fast as these entries in long-running, popular JRPG series. He reports that it achieved 785,000 Steam copies sold in its first seven days.
Alinea says that “a huge factor in Expedition 33’s success is China,” reportedly making up around a third of the game’s player base on Steam.
Outperforming some of these major RPG franchises is pretty wild, but I can’t stress enough how much more impressive it is when you consider it was included in PC Game Pass from day one. Millions of Game Pass subscribers have access to Expedition 33 at no extra cost, yet it’s still flying off of Valve’s virtual shelves.
If you’re currently playing the game yourself, or you’re seriously considering jumping in, we’ve got plenty of hands-on advice and tips to help steer you through. For example, here are our guides to the best Expedition 33 weapons and all the Expedition 33 mime locations.
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