Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has now sold an estimated 8.7 million copies and earned about $366 million, according to new figures from Alinea Analytics. That is from a debut game by Sandfall Interactive, a small French team, and it happened while the game sat on Game Pass from day one.
The estimate comes from Alinea’s head of market analysis, Rhys Elliott, in an October 22 breakdown of how recent Game of the Year winners have sold. On top of the 8.7 million sales, Alinea estimates another 4.3 million people played Expedition 33 through Game Pass on Xbox and PC.
Where the sales came from
According to Alinea, Steam accounts for 58.8% of Expedition 33’s sales, PS5 for 35.7% and Xbox for just 5.5%. Elliott puts the small Xbox share down to the game launching on Game Pass, where most Xbox players simply played it through their subscription instead of buying it.
That is the point fans are seizing on in the r/xbox discussion of the numbers. Game Pass clearly took a bite out of Xbox sales, but the game still sold millions everywhere else, and plenty of players say Game Pass is how they found it in the first place.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has sold 8.7 million copies and made $366 million, analyst says, and that’s despite the “Game Pass cannibalization”
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The Game Pass deal has now ended. Expedition 33 left the service in mid-October after about a year and a half, and Elliott says Xbox sales are “beginning to see a positive trend” since then, though it is too early to call.
How it compares
Alinea ran the same estimates for the last few Game of the Year winners at The Game Awards:
- Elden Ring (2022): 36.4 million copies, about $2 billion
- Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023): 23.2 million copies, over $1.2 billion
- Astro Bot (2024): 4.7 million copies, $291 million
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025): 8.7 million copies, $366 million
Expedition 33 is a long way from Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3, but those came from established studios with huge budgets and years of fans behind them. Sandfall did this with its first game, sold at a lower price than most big releases.
These are analyst estimates, not official numbers. The last official update came from Sandfall and publisher Kepler Interactive in April for the game’s first anniversary, when they confirmed Expedition 33 had sold over 8 million copies worldwide. Alinea’s figure suggests it has kept selling steadily in the six months since.
