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Metro
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 climbs chart after 'unusual' sales boost
One of the breakout games of 2025 is soaring up the charts even a month after launch, surpassing Doom: The Dark Ages in revenue. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 surprised everyone by being an early contender for game of the year, but its sales have also surpassed expectations. Developed by Sandfall Interactive, the French turn-based role-player managed to sell one million units within three days following its launch on April 24. Since then, in very apt timing, the studio announced it had surpassed 3.3 million copies after 33 days. The success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has now taken an 'unusual' turn, as despite coming out in April, it has ascended on Newzoo's revenue chart for May. As reported by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 moved up five places to number eight on the chart, which lists the top 20 games by revenue in the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy across PC and consoles. Newzoo described this movement as 'unusual for a premium title' as they usually drop in sales after their release month. As for the reason behind the increase, the firm believes it is 'a showcase of the strength of a high-quality game and continued word-of-mouth marketing'. Along with these factors, the mid-range £44.99 price of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has also likely contributed to its success – at a time when many new games cost £70. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Notably, the game managed to beat Doom: The Dark Ages, which debuted at number nine. According to Newzoo, the shooter's placement was due to 'a big portion of revenues being tied to Xbox Game Pass'. More Trending While over 95% of full sales for Doom: The Dark Ages came from PlayStation and Steam, Xbox players accounted for 72% of monthly active users on Newzoo's engagement chart. In other words, only a small portion of players actually bought the full game. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also launched on Xbox Game Pass, but considering Doom: The Dark Ages is significantly more expensive to buy at £69.99, it's perhaps unsurprising that the majority of players went down the Game Pass route instead. The other new addition on the chart was Elden Ring Nightreign, which managed to hit the number four spot despite being released on May 30, 2025. You can check out the top 10 of Newzoo's revenue chart for May below. Fortnite EA Sports (up two places) Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2/3/Warzone/Black Ops 6 Elden Ring Nightreign NBA 2K25 (up two places) Counter-Strike 2 & Go Forza Horizon 5 (up two places) Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (up five places) Doom: The Dark Ages Minecraft (down two places) Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Time Crisis and Point Blank lightgun console smashes Kickstarter goal within hours MORE: EA Sports FC 26 cover star leaks and they've been on before MORE: The Alters review – send in the clones
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Former GTA Lead Designer Hopes You'll Build The Content For His New Game For Free
MindsEye looks like a flashy but somewhat genericthird-person shooter techno thriller from the Xbox 360 era that recently escaped containment and is now coming out in just a few weeks. Two of the most notable things about it are its director, longtime Rockstar Games producer and Grand Theft Auto 5 lead designer Leslie Benzies, and just how exceptionally little fanfare there's been around its impending launch. A third is that MindsEye will feature its own spin on Roblox-style user-generated content, which Benzies hopes will be a big part of the game's decade-spanning growth plan. '[The studio] will support the game through with continuous new content,' he told referring to the space where a stream of studio-made add-ons for the game will be hosted, not to be confused with the toolset with which players will make their own new worlds and experiences. This big interview comes less than two weeks out from MindsEye's June 10 release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. 'Some of the content, like races, are made just for fun. But [with] most of the content, we'll try and incorporate it into the story. So once you've played the big overarching ten-year plan, you'll have a very good idea of what this universe looks like.' MindsEye was originally revealed as a spin-off to Everywhere, a mysterious MMO that aimed to be its own open-world metaverse of sorts with multiple biomes and multiplayer modes. That pitch helped Benzies' Build A Rocket Boy studio raise nearly $40 million in funding but has since faded to the background as the team pivots to launching MindsEye as a conventional single-player $60 game in partnership with publisher IO Interactive, best known for the Hitman series. But while the upcoming shooter about an ex-soldier suffering from memory loss in a fictional version of Las Vegas begins as a 20-hour linear campaign, post-launch updates and user-generated content are supposed to extend its life well into the future. It's not clear how exactly, and Benzies is cagey about the details in his interview, but it sounds an awful lot like Roblox-style exploitation is part of the model. 'We have plans to add multiplayer, [and] we have plans to make a full open world,' he said. 'And of course, we've also got to look at what players are creating, and incorporate that into our plans. Given the ease of the tools, we think there's going to be a high percentage of players who will jump in and give it a pop, see how it feels. Hopefully some will create compelling content we can then promote and make that part of our plans to push to other players.' I, too, hope 'some will create compelling content,' and by 'some' I mean the team at Build A Rocket Boy, which is selling a $60 game and a paid premium pass required to access some of the additional post-launch content. Elsewhere in the interview, Benzies talks about the spectrum of crafting in games, saying he hopes the building tools will be somewhere in the middle between Roblox (hard but expansive) and Minecraft (easy but simple). Epic recently announced it's paid out over $300 million to people making stuff in Fortnite. 'The dream from the building side is to allow players the opportunity to create their own multiplayer open world games with ease,' Benzies told 'So anyone could pick up the game, jump in, drive around, stop at a point where they see something of interest, build a little mission, jump back in the car, drive again, build another mission. Once you've built a couple of hundred of these, you've built your own open world game. So, that's the build side.' Those are lofty goals for a brand-new game from a first-time studio. If the underlying game can deliver something solid, maybe there's a chance, but if not, I don't think the promise of user-generated content will be enough to bail MindsEye out. . For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Metro
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sells 3.3 million copies after 33 days
One of 2025's breakout hits has hit an apt sales milestone, as developer Sandfall Interactive discusses its next game. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is already a frontrunner for game of the year, but it's also one of the unexpected hits of 2025. The French turn-based role-player is developer Sandfall Interactive's first game, albeit one with an oddly impressive voice cast, including Daredevil's Charlie Cox, Andy Serkis, Jennifer English, and Ben Starr from Final Fantasy 16. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 surpassed one million units sold within three days following its launch on April 24, but now it's hit a very apt milestone 33 days later. As highlighted by the game's X account on Tuesday, May 27, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has now sold 3.3 million copies after 33 days. 'Seriously,' the post reads. 'As of today. We couldn't make that up. Another entry on the long list of surreal moments that your support has made real. Thank you ALL. Tomorrow comes.' It's an impressive milestone for a new IP, and one which doesn't include the game's Game Pass numbers. For comparison, Persona 5, a Japanese role-playing game from an established series, surpassed 3.2 million units sold two years after it released worldwide in April 2017, so it's certainly tapped into an audience beyond the genre's usual remit. Thirty-three days ago, we released Clair Obscur: Expedition then, we've sold 3.3 million As of couldn't make that entry on the long list of surreal moments that your support has made real. Thank you comes.🤝 — Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (@expedition33) May 27, 2025 Sandfall Interactive spoke about the game's success in an interview with where they teased 'great ideas' for the studio's next game. 'The game has had success to an extent that we didn't imagine,' Sandfall's COO and producer, François Meurisse, said. 'We smashed our forecasts pretty fast.' More Trending Speaking about the studio's next project, he added: 'There will be another video game, for sure. I can't wait to dig more into the ideas we already have for the next game. 'Plus the team has grown up, has acquired new skills throughout production. Many of them were junior when we started. We learned to work together. So I can't wait to get to the next project, because we'll start from a more efficient position than when we started the company five years ago. 'And that [comes] with higher expectations as well, so it will be challenging. But I can say that we have – and [studio head] Guillaume Broche in particular has – great ideas for the next game.' Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available across PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: First Nintendo Switch 2 unboxing has already happened but there's a catch MORE: Blades Of Fire review – hammer of the gods MORE: Games Inbox: When will the new Tomb Raider be revealed?
