Is the age of huge games over? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 success is „a harbinger of change” and „a title that 100% knows what it is”
According to the developer of Baldur's Gate 3, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game that knows exactly what it wants to be. The title's success could help change the market and draw the attention of big publishers to projects with smaller budgets.
Released in April of this year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been a major success for the indie studio Sandfall Interactive. A small team of just over 30 people delivered an impressive turn-based jRPG that quickly won over millions of players - 3.3 million copies were sold within just 33 days of release.
The game’s success has recently caught the attention of other developers, showing that smaller games can make a big impact without spending hundreds of millions of dollars. Shawn Layden, the former head of PlayStation’s American division, recently said that the gaming market is currently suffering from content fatigue - even when it comes to AAA games from major publishers that offer hundreds of hours of gameplay and are often sequels to well-known franchises.
We've just been doing the same thing for so long. And we're just kind of wondering, can we get something new? Everything old is new again. [...] We're going to see a rebirth of what we used to call – or we could still call it – AA gaming, with a wide variety of content and games [...].
According to Layden, it’s mid-budget games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that now have more room to experiment - and they might soon dominate the market. Smaller studios can develop faster than big companies with games like these, adapting more quickly to what players want.
If a game has a great story, a detailed world and memorable characters, its budget ends up being less important. Shawn Layden points out that big companies should stop chasing photorealism and tech perfection, because it’s not really paying off anymore. This could hit giants like Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, or EA especially hard - and all of them have already gone through big waves of layoffs recently.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also got some love from Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Greg Lidstone, who recently started playing it. According to Lidstone, the game knows exactly what it wants to be. The success of the game probably comes from the determined vision of the passionate team at Sandfall Interactive.
Even the CEO of the studio behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has said that AA games are the right path forward for dev teams, especially with production costs constantly climbing. For now, though, the French studio Sandfall Interactive doesn't want to expand - they’d rather stay small and keep things tight-knit.
- „It's the passion that counts, not the budget.” Baldur's Gate 3 creator on why he's happy with 2025 Game of the Year nominees
- „Any nomination I get, I really have to give to him” Expedition 33 voice actor praises motion capture performance
- After Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 matched Baldur's Gate 3's record, the devs are shocked: „It's surreal”
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Author: Zuzanna Domeradzka
An introvert since birth, she has been interested in video games for as long as she can remember. She joined Gamepressure.com in 2022, first writing for the gaming newsroom and later helping with guides. She is an enthusiast of FPS and RPG games and a big fan of the Dragon Age, Five Nights at Freddy's, and Assassin's Creed series. She also enjoys watching movies, most often returning to Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean. She tries to spend her free time actively, riding a bike or skateboard (or platinuming the next installments of the Just Dance series).
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