Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 devs hope players will support more $40 or $50 games as publishers hope GTA 6 will charge gamers $100 to play

AAA games are extremely expensive nowadays with games like Mario Kart World or DOOM: The Dark Ages pushing $80 on launch. With publishers hoping GTA 6 launches at an eye-watering $100, the developers behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are hoping more developers follow in their footsteps and release $40 or $50 titles in an increasingly expensive market.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry, Kepler Interactive portfolio director Matthew Handrahan explained that the higher price of AAA is creating a much more attractive market for cheaper, “sensibly scoped” games from smaller teams such as the team who created Expedition 33.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 should be a statement

With millions of players and ideas for another game in the bank, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been a huge success. As games get more expensive, the brilliant turn-based RPG released with high production value and a story without the needless content bloat of many AAA titles, allowing them to launch at a lower-than-expected price point.

“I think as that AAA price goes up, I think it creates more of an opportunity to be launching games – more sensibly scoped games – [and] pricing them at that $40–50 range,” the portfolio director explained. “And I don’t think anyone that played Expedition 33 would think they didn’t get their money’s worth out of that.”

On the other hand, Sandfall Interactive COO and producer François Meurisse explained that there was some backlash due to its cheaper price. When the team revealed the game would launch at just $50, many assumed it would be extremely short or questioned the game’s actual quality, but they “doubled down” on the price while explaining that their game simply wasn’t AAA.

“When we announced the pricing at $50 we did actually have a little of a backlash online with people fearing it would be a 12-hour-long game with unfinished content, and that it was suspicious to have a $50 game that was looking like this in the trailers,” the COO explained.

Meurisse hopes that “players’ perception can change a bit about that kind of price” after the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. However, as major AAA games cost more to create than ever before—although the introduction of ray-tracing is reducing costs a little—publishers are hoping that Rockstar’s GTA 6 ends up pushing the price of games even further.

However, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 should be a statement for publishers that smaller, dedicated projects can do really well. Unfortunately, just like Baldur’s Gate 3, publishers likely won’t listen to the reasons why these games are so successful.