“I don’t really care,” he said about the potential of this new project being a flop. He continued, “It’s weird to say, but we didn’t make the first game to please anyone. And I think that’s why it worked.” This also means that the studio isn’t chasing market appeal, and it might end up making “some drastic decisions too, and maybe people won’t like it. That’s life.”

“Whether people follow us or not is their decision. But that’s how we see the future,” he explained.

This, Broche believes, is a healthier way for developers to approach new projects, especially since it would help them avoid getting “crushed under the pressure” of living up to their previous releases. However, he is still realistic about the outcome and doesn’t want to end up selling zero copies. “Of course, if we sell zero copies, we’ll still have problems. But normally, it’ll be fine.”

Broche had previously spoken about how the runaway success seen by the studio with the release of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won’t really end up changing much at Sandfall Interactive. In an interview from back in December, he noted that the studio wants to continue working on games with “stories that move people”.

“I feel like dramatic changes don’t necessarily mean that we have to change dramatically as human beings,” said Broche. “What we want to do is exactly what we wanted to do when we started the game. It’s just [to] make games that are really honest and true, and write stories that move people and really connect people emotionally, and that’s what we are going to keep doing moving forward.”

When asked about whether this means that Sandfall Interactive might start growing its workforce, Broche confirmed that there are no such plans for the time being. “We don’t want to grow too much as a company,” he said. “We work well as we are now, as a small team, and we want to stay like that, because we are very happy, and why change?”

This matches Broche’s thoughts on the team’s size. Back in May 2025, he had noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 would have taken much longer to develop if it were being made by a big company.

Projects like these—with new IPs, original stories, completely original characters—are super hard to push through in a big company,” he explained. “There are a lot of approval steps, and in general, in big structures, you already have to have proven yourself and be pretty high up in the hierarchy just to have a chance at pitching this kind of project.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review.

That is not to say that Hamaguchi believes that turn-based games should go away, however. He noted that the genre also has its own strengths. “Games where you evaluate the situation, contemplate your moves, and build upon the decisions you make are deeply universal, closely tied to the very nature of human thought.”

He even went on to bring up other recent games—like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, for example—that are able to bring in real-time action elements despite their combat systems being turn-based. “It’s also true that when we look at younger players, they increasingly favor more real-time experiences in games,” he said. “I believe they’re a generation that’s naturally accustomed to receiving instant feedback upon input.”

“With that context in mind, it may have been inevitable for turn-based games that incorporate real-time decision-making through action elements to gain prominence. I think this reflects players’ desire for both the excitement of strategy and the immediacy of response.”

With the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, Hamaguchi said that the development team was concerned about how moving the 1997 original into the world of real-time action combat would “reduce the room for strategic thinking and the momentary tension of choosing commands that were present in the original game.”

Ultimately, however, the studio was able to bring in elements of the original Final Fantasy 7‘s Active-Time Battle system into the Remake trilogy by allowing players to pull off special moves after a certain number of regular attacks filled up an ATB bar.

It is worth noting that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was far from the first game to blend real-time elements with turn-based combat in an RPG. Titles as old as 1996’s Super Mario RPG on SNES featured similar elements. We would also see these elements make their way into other titles like 2008’s Xbox 360 JRPG Lost Odyssey, as well as Nintendo’s Mario & Luigi franchise.

Interestingly, Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida had expressed the belief that a modern audience would be more receptive to real-time combat in RPGs rather than turn-based systems. In an interview from 2022, he spoke about growing up with turn-based RPGs, as well as opinions about the combat systems from younger players these days.

“I’m from a generation that grew up with command and turn-based RPGs,” Yoshida said. “I think I understand how interesting and immersive it can be. On the other hand, for the past decade or so, I’ve seen quite a number of opinions saying ‘I don’t understand the attraction of selecting commands in video games.’”

Recently, Hamaguchi had also spoken about the decision to turn the remake of Final Fantasy 7 into a trilogy, and how there was simply no other way to achieve the level of detail and world density that Square Enix wanted.

To celebrate, the developer has released a new minor update which adds first anniversary haircuts for all party members. You can pick up Gustave’s at the Stone Wave Cliffs from the Gestral Merchant, while Verso, Maelle, Lune, Monoco and Sciel can find theirs at the merchant near Grosse Tête.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC, and yes, it’s still playable on Game Pass, which is a fantastic deal. Check out our review, where we gave it a 9 out of 10 for its excellent combat, storytelling, presentation, exploration, the list goes on. Sandfall would release several updates, with the biggest being “Thank You,” which added a new region, end-game bosses, weapons, outfits and more.

As for the studio’s next project, it wants to focus on “what we think is cool” and trusting its instincts, per lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen.

On March 24th, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth will finally be added to the service for Ultimate, Premium and PC subscribers. Guard Crush Games’ Absolum follows on March 25th, which also marks the acclaimed rogue-lite beat ’em up’s debut on Xbox Series X/S.

Nova Roma, a city-building title from Lion Shield, will premiere in Game Preview for Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers, coinciding with its early access release. Survival crafting fans can look forward to The Long Dark becoming available on March 30th for Premium, PC, and Ultimate. Finally, Resident Evil 7: biohazard will be playable on March 31st, joining the Resident Evil Village.

But wait, there’s more. Barbie Horse Trails kicks off next month alongside Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the latter finally available to Premium subscribers. If that wasn’t enough, Square Enix’s march to include every single mainline Final Fantasy title on Game Pass seemingly continues with Final Fantasy 4 on April 7th.

Surprisingly, only two games will be leaving the service on March 31st. Check them out below:

• Peppa Pig World Adventures (Cloud, Console, PC)
• Mad Streets (Cloud, Console, PC)

Hennet showcased some of her work during her tenure at Sandfall Interactive—which lasted from May 2023 to the end of 2024—through a showcase reel on ArtStation. It features plenty of motion capture footage for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Hennet was responsible for converting the raw motion capture footage into a cleaner version, which could then be further refined for the full game.

“During my time at Sandfall Interactive, my main responsibilities included cleaning up and refining body and facial motion capture, as well as managing data from Xsens to UE5,” wrote Hennet on ArtStation. “I also provided support on the motion capture sessions and contributed to building the animation pipeline for the cinematics.”

Development on The Witcher 4 has seemingly been going slow and steady, with CD Projekt RED also focusing on growing its team. Interestingly, December saw the studio add another cinematics-focused artist to its ranks—former Baldur’s Gate 3 senior cinematic artist Felix Pedulla.

“After an incredible and frankly wild six-year ride with the amazing team at Larian Studios, a new chapter begins,” wrote Pedulla on LinkedIn. “I’m so grateful for every chaotic, creative, and unforgettable moment we shared. We made some serious magic together, and I’ll forever cherish the lessons and memories. A huge thank you to all my incredible colleagues and friends I made.”

“As one adventure ends, another begins! I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I’m joining the legendary team at CD Projekt Red as a Senior Cinematic Designer! The opportunity to contribute to one of the most ambitious studios in the industry is a dream come true. Time to trade in my Baldur’s Gate dice for some Polish steel and get to work crafting some epic cutscenes.”

While few details about The Witcher 4 have been released in recent months, Noble Securities analyst Mateusz Chrzanowski has predicted that, when all is said and done, more than $800 million will have been spent on the RPG. In his analysis, while Chrzanowski noted that the development itself will likely end up costing CD Projekt around $388 million, marketing and other expenses will add on quite a bit, bringing the overall expenses to beyond the $800 million mark.

Rumors and reports by analysts have also indicated that, as the work on The Witcher 4 continues, CD Projekt RED has plans to bridge the gap between the upcoming RPG and its predecessor by releasing a new DLC for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This DLC is expected to be priced at $30, and will likely end up being the start of a proper marketing push for The Witcher 4.

For more, check out what CD Projekt co-CEO Michał Nowakowski has to say about the role of generative AI in game development.

Garavaryan spoke about how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ticks many boxes that one might expect from a AAA RPG, from its polished gameplay to the fidelity of visuals, as well as the quality of its voice acting and soundtrack. However, he also noted that the novel experience offered by the title’s narrative played an important role thanks to its blend of old-school turn-based combat with more modern takes on the fantasy RPG genre.

“I think historically there was always some sort of space in terms of the visual fidelity,” he said. “I think there is less importance given by players on how high the visual fidelity is when you play a video game today. I also think the size of the experience, the depth, the number of hours you get out of the content is maybe less important than how exceptional, how interesting, how novel the experience is.”

The publisher and studio had discussions about pricing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 lower than its contemporaries specifically because potential buyers would then find it to be “respectful of their money,” as well as their time.

“I think ultimately we’ve seen a number of larger companies increase prices quite regularly,” Garavaryan explained. “We try to think, ‘what do we think the price should be?’ And then we price it lower, so that when players buy a game from us, they feel like they’re getting a bargain. We want them to feel like we are respectful of their money, respectful of their time, and that fundamentally, every time they buy a game from us, they’re getting a great deal.”

The price also helped set Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 apart from its contemporaries, noted Garavaryan. The modern state of the gaming industry has seen prices going up across the board, from individual titles to subscription services and even consoles. Despite this, there has also never really been a time when players have had access to so many high-quality games on a regular basis.

“I think we are living in an industry where players have access to exceptional video games on a weekly basis,” Garavaryan said. “If you want to deserve their attention, their money, I think you need to bring something to the table that’s truly great and truly special.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details about the title, check out our review. Also take a look at why the studio doesn’t believe that a big team is needed to develop high-quality games. While you’re at it, take a look at our thoughts about the “Thank You” update released back in December.

The post is a the latest iteration of the Xbox Excellence Awards, which was created last year to celebrate how players engaged with various releases on Xbox. The Store Rating category lists 2025 games with the best ratings on the Microsoft Store, with an added requirement of the title having at least 500 ratings. Player Engagements is about the average number of hours spent on a game by each player within the first six weeks of a game’s release. Daily Active Users celebrates titles, expansions or updates with the highest single-day active users throughout the year. And finally Units Sold is fairly self-explanatory.

Going down the lists, you’ll find many of the biggest releases of the year, from ARC Raiders and Battlefield 6, as well as award-winning RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Indie titles have also been well-represented, with games like Crime Scene Cleaner and Satisfactory making it into the lists. There also doesn’t seem to have been a singular genre to dominate the lists, since everything from sports games like EA Sports Madden NFL 26, to fantasy adventure life sims like Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, and even fighting games like Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics are well represented.

Curiously, none of the games was present in all four of the categories. At most, we got to see titles like Borderlands 4 being able to make it on to three of them: Player Engagement, Daily Active Users and Units Sold. Even ARC Raiders, which has seen quite a bit of success, is only on the Units Sold and Daily Active Users lists.

Microsoft has also emphasized that the lists represent a diverse collection of games developed by studios of varying sizes. All in all, it represents 48 unique developers based out of 13 countries, with 24 publishers having had a hand in their release. 19 of the games were self-published. “Taken as a whole, it’s an encapsulation of development on Xbox – we want gaming to reach you wherever you are, and for the teams making those games to find you from wherever they are,” wrote the company.

Full list of games:

Store Rating:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Crime Scene Cleaner
• Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles 2
• Digimon Story: Time Stranger
• Dreamcore
• Dynasty Warriors: Origins
• Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
• Final Fantasy XVI
• Lies of P: Overture
• Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
• Little Nightmares III
• Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics
• Minami Lane
• Mullet MadJack
• Poppy Playtime Chapter 4
• Satisfactory
• Silent Hill 2
• Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
• The First Berserker: Khazan

Player Engagement:

• Borderlands 4
• Digimon Story: Time Stranger
• Dynasty Warriors: Origins
• EA Sports College Football 26
• EA Sports FC 26
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
• Farm Together 2
• Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles
• Helldivers 2
• Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
• MLB The Show 25
• Monster Hunter Wilds
• NBA 2K26
• NHL 26
• Rust
• Satisfactory
• The First Berserker: Khazan

Daily Active Users:

• Arc Raiders
• Avowed
• Battlefield 6
• Borderlands 4
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
• DOOM: The Dark Ages
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• Fortnite
• Forza Horizon 5
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Grounded 2
• Helldivers 2
• Marvel Rivals
• Minecraft
• NBA 2K26
• Rematch
• Roblox
• Rocket League
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege

Units Sold:

• Arc Raiders
• Assassin’s Creed Shadows
• Battlefield 6
• Borderlands 4
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
• EA Sports Madden NFL 26
• EA Sports College Football 26
• EA Sports FC 26
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Helldivers 2
• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• MLB The Show 25
• Monster Hunter Wilds
• NBA 2K26
• PGA Tour 2K25
• Ready or Not
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
• WWE 2K25

It’s hardly surprising since the critically-acclaimed role-playing game swept The Game Awards and Golden Joystick Awards while being nominated for eight categories in the Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. That’s not counting the myriad of publications and websites that awarded it the same (although our top honors went to Death Stranding 2: On the Beach). Or the fact that it was disqualified from the Indie Game Awards due to the usage of generative AI, which the studio later clarified.

Following the “Thank You” update, Sandfall Interactive is seemingly moving on from Clair Obscur to its next project. Nothing is set in stone, and while the studio is certainly feeling the pressure to deliver, it wants to focus on “what we think is cool,” per lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen.

One thing that you can be sure of is that it won’t be bigger than Expedition 33. Creative director Guillaume Broche said it’s “good to have limitations” when being creative since “It’s the best way to be the best version of yourself.” Despite five million sales and counting, the team is also resisting the urge to scale up as Broche wants to focus on “making games” rather than managing.

When asked about whether the next game by Sandfall Interactive will be bigger than Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Broche gave a definitive answer: “No, I think it’s good to have limitations when you are creative.”

“It’s the best way to be the best version of yourself. We could scale up now we have a lot more money, but I would say it’s not tempting for us, because even the management team and myself, we’d have to be hands-on and doing things for ourselves. We love making games more than we love managing, so we want to keep doing that. These past five years were some of the best of my life, and I want to be happy like that again,” he said.

Guillermin noted that a small team allowed everyone to essentially know each other, which in turn helps with better communication in game development. He also spoke about how, with the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the team now has a strong foundation to start building out its future projects, before noting that a large team isn’t really needed to make and ship high-quality games.

“In terms of team dynamics, everybody knows everybody in the team, and people are used to working together,” explained Guillermin. “Now we are lucky enough to have a strong foundation from the previous project, but expanding for the sake of expanding is not our vision.

“Our vision is to ship quality games, and we don’t believe you need to have a lot of people to do that. There are large teams that deliver great games, of course, but for us what works best is pretty much our current size. We don’t want to change the team structure and dynamic.”

Broche had previously spoken about how things at Sandfall Interactive wouldn’t really change much in light of the critical acclaim of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. He also confirmed at the time that the studio doesn’t have plans to grow its headcount.

“We don’t want to grow too much as a company,” he said. “We work well as we are now, as a small team, and we want to stay like that, because we are very happy, and why change?”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 came out on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S last year, and since then has garnered near-universal praise and acclaim before going on to win several awards. The studio is currently working on its next project, and while it hasn’t revealed any details yet, COO and production director François Meurisse noted that the studio has been feeling “a bit of pressure”, and that it is working on “some great ideas we’re so excited to explore.”

For more on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, check out our review.

He acknowledged that, while they are great games, you can’t really make something like a new Grand Theft Auto with a budget of $10 million. He noted that the industry needs games of all kinds and expressed hope that the industry doesn’t jump on the AA game bandwagon in the future.

“You do hear, after the success of things like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, that the AA games are taking over,” he said. “But I would not be able to live without a AAA title. I really want to play the blockbuster games. You can’t do GTA for $10 million. We need both. It’s important not to get stuck in ideas, like AA is a new thing, or indie is a new thing, or ‘blah, blah, blah’ is a new thing. We need the diversity. I hope that publishers don’t just look at a game like Expedition, which has been super successful, and think, ‘oh, AA is a new thing. Let’s only do that.’ I don’t believe in that. You had a huge amount of AA games that came this year, which nobody cared about. Let’s remember that.”

When the concept of risk vs reward came up, with Dring noting that it’s often harder for games with AAA budgets to take major risks, Fares brought up studios like Naughty Dog that are using their massive budgets to push the creative envelope in different ways. He argued that it is possible to develop AAA games that also take risks to a certain extent. He did, however, acknowledge that incredibly large budgets (for example, $100 million) might make risk-taking a more difficult proposition for companies.

“I would argue that, actually, Naughty Dog is pushing the envelope of innovation with a AAA budget,” he counters. “I would argue Rockstar is doing it. Nintendo is, most of the time, doing it. So you can do a big AAA title but also take innovative risks. But once you go over a $100 million budget, you’re going to be like, ‘okay, s***. There’s a lot of money on the table’. People are more scared. It’s understandable. But it’s proven that you can do it.”

Fares spoke about how his own studio, Hazelight Studios, likes to take risks. He noted that the studio’s ethos is to “f*** s*** up” while still being careful about the responsibilities towards its employees.

“The f*** s*** up mentality, without f***ing up, is important, because we take things to the next level,” he said. “We can explore. If you are limited, because of risk and being scared, it’s not good for the game. So, for us, it will always be like that, whatever the budget.”

“With that said, obviously, there’s a responsibility. People need money to pay the rent, and there’s a responsibility to who’s paying for the budget, and to actually deliver the milestone, to do a great game, to not slack, to do something really well.”

Split Fiction is available on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch. For more details, check out our review.