There has been rumour recently that Rare's popular pirate adventure game, Sea of Thieves may be on PlayStation consoles and the Nintendo Switch as early as 2024.
The rumours started on the Nate the Hate podcast where it was implied that the game's publisher, Microsoft, may be preparing to release one of its "more acclaimed" first-party games to competitors' platforms this year. Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb added fuel to the rumours on Monday when he mentioned that he'd heard Sea of Thieves might be one of the titles making the cross-platform crossover.
Speaking in his trade publication Game File, former Kotaku editor Stephen Totilo confirmed the rumours by using a source who claimed Microsoft was thinking of releasing Sea of Thieves on the PlayStation, possibly as early as 2024.
Sea of Thieves was the first exclusive game to debut on Xbox Game Pass along with its retail release, making it a noteworthy milestone for Microsoft when it was first published for Xbox One and PC in March 2018. With more than 15 million players by July 2020, the game was officially dubbed
"the most successful new IP from Xbox this generation."
The game's continued success was highlighted by the release of an improved version on the Xbox Series X/S in November 2020 and the news from Rare in June 2022 that over 30 million people have played it. Although several fans believed that the mysterious Xbox game on its way to rival systems would be Tango Gameworks' Hi-Fi Rush, Grubb did not rule out the notion, speculating that Microsoft might be evaluating each game individually to decide the optimal course of action.
Grubb remarked,
"I don't know if this is necessarily a sign of a change in the global strategy for how they approach Xbox going forward. It seems like it might just be a case-by-case thing."
An iconic game for Microsoft's gaming library is Sea of Thieves, an open-world pirate adventure from publisher Xbox Game Studios and developer Rare. A curious element to Microsoft's changing gaming strategy is the possibility of Sea of Thieves branching out to new platforms, a development that industry observers are eager to see confirmed.