Sea of Thieves has reportedly surpassed one million sales on PS5, after the previously Xbox-exclusive title was released for the console back in late April.
As with any game, whilst there was a downturn from its initial release to the present day, Sony reports show it maintaining popularity. Sea of Thieves was the most downloaded PS5 game in the North American and European regions in May, ranked top five in June and top ten in July.
Regarding the tactic Xbox boss, Phil Spencer, said:
“Going to the PlayStation announcement, obviously last spring we launched four games, two of them on the Switch, four of them on PlayStation – and we said we were going to learn. I think at the Showcase I might have said that from our learning, we’re going to do more.
“What I see when I look is that our franchises are getting stronger, our Xbox console players this year are as high as they’ve ever been, so I look at it and I say our player numbers are going up for the console platform, our franchises are as strong as they’ve ever been… we run a business.”
Originally released in 2018 for Xbox, it seems as though Sea of Thieves is indicative of a trend in Microsoft’s business strategy, whereby they give priority to their own consoles with developed titles before porting at a later date. An even more recent example of this is the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which was confirmed at Gamescom to release for Xbox and PC this December, and PS5 early 2025.
Spencer continued: “It’s definitely true inside of Microsoft that the bar is high for us in terms of the delivery that we have to give back to the company, because we get a level of support from the company that is just amazing in terms of what we’re able to go do.
“So I look at this: how can we make our games as strong as possible, ensure that our platform continues to grow both on console, PC, and cloud, and I think it’s just going to be a strategy that works for us” (thanks, VGC).