Shuhei Yoshida, the former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, has said he advised the team behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 against describing the game as a turn-based RPG, warning that the label on its own could cost it an audience. IGN reports the remarks were made during a recent lecture for independent developers, covered by 4Gamer and translated into English by Automaton.
It's incredibly well-made, but it would be better not to call it a turn-based RPG. That alone might cause players to overlook it.
Yoshida, who ran PlayStation's indie initiatives before stepping down in 2024, was advising publisher Kepler Interactive ahead of the game's April 2025 release. By his account the concern was not the game's quality but the genre's reputation: at the time, he saw a tendency for turn-based Japanese RPGs to be read as outdated, whatever the design behind them.
He had praised the game before release, according to IGN, singling out its combination of turn-based JRPG mechanics with real-time action inputs, which he compared to The Legend of Dragoon. Kepler's response was to reframe the pitch rather than drop the mechanic, marketing Sandfall Interactive's combat as reactive turn-based battles.
The label the game outgrew
Whatever the framing achieved, the game was not overlooked. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched close to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion and still became a commercial success, drawing a 9 out of 10 review from IGN and taking awards at The Game Awards, BAFTA, DICE and IGN's own ceremony. Sandfall's developers have previously said they were unprepared for the scale of its critical reception.
Yoshida told the lecture that the genre's standing appears to have shifted since. He said he has noticed an increase in reports of publishers receiving pitches for new turn-based RPGs, a change he tied to the reception of games like Sandfall's rather than to any single marketing decision.
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