The highly acclaimed Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has just added another accolade to its name – it’s now the biggest novel third-party game to be released on Xbox Game Pass in 2025.
Microsoft announced this news after analyzing data from each Xbox Game Pass launch day this year and ranking each third-party game by unique users in its first 30 days of availability.
This is an extremely impressive achievement for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the debut game from French studio Sandfall Interactive, for several different reasons. Firstly, because the game came out just two days after Bethesda’s release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (which was also released on Game Pass). And secondly, because we already know that Clair Obscur also sold very well (5 million copies in five months) – something that the release via Game Pass doesn’t seem to have an impact on.
“From being onsite to announce our game in summer 2024, to coming to the studio for the Developer_Direct video in January, Xbox helped us spread the word and reach many gamers,” Sandfall artistic director Guillaume Broche said in a statement.
Xbox Game Pass allows “a lot of people to try our game who may not have tried it before,” Broche continued. “The turn-based RPG genre has a lot of fans, but can sometimes be off-putting to people who prefer real-time action games, but Game Pass lowered that barrier to entry. They could just try it and see what it felt like. Many curious players could pick up the game, experience Lumière and the early game, and realize there was a lot to do here, even if they didn’t expect it at first.”
So what did the Clair Obscur competition look like on Xbox Game Pass? It’s been a long year, so it’s worth taking a look back at everything the turn-based RPG has beaten to become the year’s biggest third-party release of Xbox Game Pass. (And remember, this is separate from Microsoft’s first-party productions, which will include Avowed and South by Midnight, as well as Bethesda games like The Outer Worlds 2 and Activision offerings like Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.)
Other third-party games that launched on Microsoft’s subscription service on day one include the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong and the post-apocalyptic survival game Atomfall. The highly acclaimed indie puzzle game Blue Prince also launched this year, as did Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, Ball X Pit and PowerWash Simulator 2.
So congratulations on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – something we may hear a few more times this month, given the record number of nominations for The Game Awards. Were you tempted to try it? The game is still available on Xbox Game Pass and we have a whole range of it tips on vital things to know before heading to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s news editor. You can contact Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
