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There has been a common narrative among the industry that players aren’t interested in hyper-realistic JRPGs (just anime-heavy ones), which is why the Final Fantasy series has largely shifted to real-time combat.
We bet Square Enix is kicking itself. Expedition 33’s success flies in the face of the sentiment that modern and realistic JRPGs don’t work, highlighting that there’s been a gap in the market all along.
In fact, Expedition 33 has even been performing better than some of the heaviest hitters in the JRPG space made by iconic studios.
On Steam, Expedition 33 has so far sold faster than iconic anime-style JRPGs like Persona 5 Royal (3.3x faster), Persona 3 (3.9x), and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2.3x). However, these are all ports/re-releases of games that came out on console first.
Even more impressively, Expedition 33 is selling 2.3x faster than Metaphor ReFantazio and 4x faster than Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth – two day-in-date Steam launches from two of the JRPG genre’s most iconic developers, Atlus and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio.
A huge factor in Expedition 33’s success that cannot be understated is the Chinese market. China is actually the top country for Expedition 33 on Steam, accounting for 27% of players (the US is #2 with 25%, and France is #3 with 7%).
On PlayStation, the US is number #1 (28% of players), France is #2 (12%), and China is #3 (also 12%). The game is so popular in France as its development studio is based there, and the game features noticeable French influences.
Japan accounted for just 4.2% of Expedition 33 players even on PlayStation, which is far lower than Japan’s PlayStation shares for JRPG games like Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (29%), Metaphor: ReFantazio (15%), and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (11%).
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