According to analyst statistics, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has reached total sales of 8.7 million copies since its release last year, generating cumulative revenue of $366 million. Although the game has been added to the PC Game Pass subscription library, the majority of its sales still come from the Steam platform.
A report released by Alina Analytics reviewed the sales data across various platforms for several recent Game of the Year award winners—Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Astro Bot, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
As one of the most successful games in history, Elden Ring naturally leads the pack with cumulative sales of 36.4 million copies and revenue of $2 billion; Baldur's Gate 3 follows closely with 23.2 million copies sold and $1.2 billion in revenue. Astro Bot has accumulated sales of 4.7 million copies and revenue of $291 million. Considering it is a platform-exclusive title and belongs to the niche platformer genre, this performance is not surprising.
Looking at the most recent and most awarded Game of the Year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, it swept the five major annual game awards just like Baldur's Gate 3, tying the industry record. Although its sales and revenue scale are far behind Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3, this indie title still achieved $366 million in revenue with 8.7 million copies sold.
However, unlike the other three titles, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was available for free to Xbox Game Pass subscribers until last week. During this period, the Xbox console and PC Game Pass channels combined brought in 4.3 million players for the game. Alina referred to this phenomenon as the "Game Pass cannibalization effect"—while the subscription service did divert some sales on the Xbox platform, with only 5.5% of game sales coming from Xbox users, its impact on PC sales was quite limited, as Steam users accounted for 58.8% of sales.
Despite this "cannibalization effect," Guillaume Broche, Creative Director of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, remains positive about the value of Xbox Game Pass. He stated that the subscription model "lowers the barrier to entry for players," especially since turn-based RPGs tend to "discourage players who prefer real-time action games," and the subscription model helps offset this disadvantage.
Meanwhile, Matt Piscatella, an analyst at market research firm Circana, also stated that this game is "a very typical case demonstrating that joining a subscription service can actually amplify a game's sales potential."
When the subscription fee becomes the only barrier to experiencing a game, more players are willing to try it, and the game's reputation continues to spread. Admittedly, 4.3 million players got to play the game without purchasing it, but this doesn't mean that all 4.3 million would have bought the game at full price if the subscription service hadn't existed.