Sea of Thieves Sails Past 40 Million Players Ahead of PS5 Launch
As Sea of Thieves prepares to set sail for PlayStation 5, developer Rare has announced it has seen 40 million players since launching in 2018.
In a blog post, executive producer Joe Neate said Sea of Thieves’ 40 million player milestone comes from users across Xbox, Windows 10, and Steam. Since launching on Xbox One and PC six years ago, Rare has released over 100 free updates. Season 12 launches soon, and with it brings new additions like throwing knives and the Bone Caller.
Sea of Thieves launches on PS5 on April 30, with the premium edition offering five days of early access from April 25. Progress and items transfer from the Xbox version to the PS5 version, and there are PlayStation-only servers with the ability to disable crossplay. Performance options match the Xbox Series X version, and the PS5 version has 60 base Trophies and a Platinum Trophy called Pirate Perfectionist.
When Sea of Thieves launched it was seen as a make or break game for Rare, which had made a couple of Kinect Sports games before Microsoft moved on from the motion-tracking add-on. But Sea of Thieves is a success for the studio, becoming one of its most-played games ever. As for the future, Rare is still working on Everwild, announced in 2019 but without a release window.
Sea of Thieves is the latest Xbox game to make the jump to rival platforms, joining Obsidian’s Grounded and Pentiment, and Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush. Microsoft is testing the multiplatform waters with this quartet, and may release more of its first-party games on non-Xbox consoles in the future. In an interview with IGN, former Xbox chief Peter Moore offered his thoughts on why Microsoft was making this move now.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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