The surprise launch of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered gave players plenty of reason to be excited. But for those who looking forward to Sandfall Interactive’s debut game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, there was also plenty of reason to question the timing of this grand reveal. Why would Xbox shadow-drop a remake for one of the most influential and beloved role-playing games ever two days before one of the most promising original games of the year? Surely this would eclipse the new IP it featured so heavily during last year’s summer Showcase.
Well, it turns out that people needn’t have worried. Expedition 33 managed to sell over a million copies in a week despite its release proximity to Bethesda’s RPG classic. According to Expedition 33 publisher Kepler Interactive, what many saw as clear competition actually worked in the freshman studio’s favor.
Matt Handrahan, Kelper Interactive's portfolio manager, told The Game Business that the synergy between Expedition 33 and Oblivion “just drew attention to quality RPGs that week and everybody was thinking and talking about the genre.”
“We always knew that Expedition 33 had a very specific identity,” Handrahan said. “When I was in the press, I saw the Western-style RPG and the Japanese-style RPG as having quite different appeal and audiences. I knew plenty of people that would play an Elder Scrolls game that wouldn't necessarily play Final Fantasy and vice versa.”
It’s a moment that mirrors “Barbenheimer,” the 2023 pop culture moment where Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer debuted at the box office on the same day. Rather than choosing between the two blockbusters, most movie-going audiences made time for both. Both films would go on to become some of the most successful movies of the year despite polar opposite subject matters.
Similarly, Expedition 33 and Oblivion are two RPGs grasping for specific subsects of the same audience. And the numbers prove this to be true. The Game Business reports that 55 percent of those who played Expedition 33 on Xbox also played Oblivion. Across all platforms, 35 percent of all Expedition 33 players also checked out Oblivion Remastered.
Handrahan explained that by the time release week rolled around, Sandfall and Kepler were fairly confident in the hype surrounding their game, even as Bethesda began teasing the worst-kept secret of the last two years.
While Expedition 33 is an entirely original concept, Handrahan said premiering a trailer last summer during Xbox’s Summer Game Fast showcase last year, and again during Xbox’s Developer Showcase in January helped carve out its niche fairly early. By the time release rolled around, overwhelmingly positive reviews and word of mouth helped do the rest.
“It helped us to kind of claim this AA territory in a much more confident way,” he said of the showcases. “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.”
While Xbox is having a rough week after jacking up the prices of its hardware and announcing its plan to release $80 games, Game Pass getting two of the year’s most surprising and well-received RPGs in the same week gives them a much-needed win and a proof case why it’s still the best deal in gaming.
While it’s a fun novelty that two opposite role-playing games released so close to one another, this isn’t even the first time gaming has seen a Barbenheimer-esque situation. In 2020, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal both released on March 19, just days into lockdowns. It was another pop culture moment that inspired thousands of hilarious memes, dozens of hours worth of fun, and a much-needed distraction for those who wisely picked up both games.
