Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 team mourns PlayStation’s planned end of physical discs

Creative director and CEO Guillaume Broche and CTO Tom Guillermin said Sandfall Interactive pushed for a boxed release and even bought copies of its own RPG after launch.

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Sandfall Interactive’s team has criticized Sony’s plan to stop producing physical game discs for PlayStation consoles from January 2028, calling the decision a loss for players who collect games and for the medium’s tangible side.

Guillaume Broche, Sandfall’s CEO and creative director on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, said he still enjoys visiting video game stores, even though he mainly plays on PC. He also pointed to the many Sandfall team members who play on PS5 and collect boxed games.

“Personally, I find it super sad because I really like video game stores,” Broche told Automaton. “And even if nowadays, I play mainly on PC myself, we have a lot of people on the team who play on PS5 and love to collect physical discs. I think it’s part of the beauty of art too – that it’s something tangible.”

Broche acknowledged that Sony’s position may make sense from a business perspective, but he described the wider effect as “a sad decision” for creativity in the games industry.

Sandfall had to push for a boxed release

Tom Guillermin, Sandfall Interactive’s co-founder and CTO, said the team had to argue for a physical edition of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Producing boxed copies adds manufacturing demands, takes more time, and returns less money per unit than a digital sale.

That did not outweigh the team’s desire to give players a physical option. “But for us, physical was something special. We also felt that the game could be special to players, and that they would want to, as Guillaume said, hold it in their hands,” Guillermin said.

That belief also shaped what happened after launch. Broche recalled that members of Sandfall went to a video game store and bought their own game as a gesture. Seeing a copy on a store shelf made the project feel real in a way that a digital storefront could not.

He also remembered receiving a photograph from Japan showing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 in a store in Akihabara, with the game’s Japanese packaging visible. Broche said the moment made him feel like a kid because the RPG had become something tangible that people could see in a real shop.

Other members of the team described similar reactions. Lead character and concept artist Alan Reynaud said seeing the game in stores still makes him happy, particularly because players can leave home, buy a game, and return with it.

Reynaud also compared physical games with books and manga. He said storing a digital copy on a computer does not create the same feeling as keeping a physical item in a personal library, and that removing the physical format could mean losing part of the medium’s spirit.

Technical artist Alexandre Breton added that physical games can preserve memories in a way digital purchases cannot always match. Years later, a box and its title can still be held and seen, potentially bringing back the memories connected to the game.

Physical releases have become a smaller part of the market as digital storefronts have grown, but Sandfall’s comments show why boxed games still matter to some developers and players. A disc can serve as a display piece, a collectible, and a way to keep a personal copy outside the reach of changing online services.

Sandfall’s position is clear: even with the extra work and lower earnings per copy, the team wanted players who cared about physical ownership to have that choice before Sony’s planned January 2028 end to PlayStation disc production.

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Lead the members of Expedition 33 on their quest to destroy the Paintress so that she can never paint death again. Explore a world of wonders inspired by Belle Époque France and battle unique enemies in this turn-based RPG with real-time mechanics.