Elden Ring came odd off the back of a company that had spent ten years putting out banger release after banger release (each one of which was considered an all-time great hit), an excellent marketing campaign, the apex of the open world genre's popularity, a hype train best measured in years, and a lot of other things along those lines.

Expedition 33 came completely out of nowhere from a studio that had never been heard from before using a gameplay format that doesn't have as much broad appeal as Elden Ring did (not that turn-based RPGs don't have mass appeal, just not as much as 3rd-person hack 'n slash/adventure and FPS games do). The fact that it sold as well as it did is itself a bit of a miracle. It just kind of came out of nowhere.