Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has sold 8.7 million copies and generated $336 million in revenue since its launch last year, with the majority of sales on Steam despite being on PC Game Pass.
A post by Alinea Analytics breaks down how the last few Game of the Year award winners – Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Astro Bot, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – have sold across their various platforms.
As one of the biggest games ever made, Elden Ring naturally leads with $2 billion from 36.4 million copies sold, and Baldur's Gate 3 isn't too far behind with $1.2 billion from 23.2 million copies sold. Meanwhile Astro Bot made $291 million across 4.7 million copies sold, which is natural being an exclusive and being a sadly niche genre (bring back platformers being the top genre I beg you).
Then comes the most recent and most-awarded Game of the Year winner, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which matched the record set by Baldur's Gate 3 by winning all five major GOTY awards. While not quite near the Elden Ring or Baldur's Gate 3 numbers, the indie title has made $366 million through 8.7 million copies sold.
However, unlike the other three games, Clair Obscur was also available for 'free' to Xbox Game Pass subscribers until last week, and during that time it brought in 4.3 million players across Xbox consoles and PC Game Pass users. This naturally had an impact on Xbox sales through what Alinea calls "Game Pass cannibalization", with only 5.5% of sales coming from Xbox users, but this didn't really seem to affect PC sales too much, as 58.8% of sales came from Steam users.
Despite this "cannibalization," Clair Obscur creative director Guillaume Broche has been positive about Xbox Game Pass, and its impact on the game. He notes that the subscription "lowered that barrier of entry," especially when turn-based RPG's could "put people who prefer more real-time action games off."
Meanwhile, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella says the game is "a great example of a game where its sales potential was likely increased because of its inclusion in a subscription service."
As more people got to try the game with the subscription fee as the only barrier to entry, word of mouth will surely grow. So sure, 4.3 million people experienced the game without buying it, but that doesn't mean that 4.3 million people would buy the game outright otherwise.
