Sea of Thieves could set sail for new platforms – in shakeup to Xbox’s plan
A week after it was suggested that Hi-Fi Rush could soon make its way to more platforms, another high-profile Xbox exclusive looks primed to set sail for elsewhere.
There aren’t too many Xbox exclusives that could comfortably be dubbed a live-service game. However, with the exception of Halo Infinite, one of the most successful is unquestionably Sea of Thieves, Rare’s bona fide pirate simulator that lets players set sail for the high seas together in search of loot, treasure, and adventure. Since its launch in 2018 it’s comfortably remained an Xbox and PC mainstay, but that could be about to change going by an insider’s recent comments.
Word that Sea of Thieves could arrive on Nintendo – and potentially even PlayStation – platforms comes directly from insider Jeff Grubb, who on his Game Mess podcast said “Sea of Thieves... I'll say I've heard that that was one that might be coming to other platforms”. He later went on to reference the leaks regarding Hi-Fi Rush’s potential exodus last week, reaffirming “when I first started hearing these rumours, I was like, this is probably about Sea of Thieves because I've heard that could come to Switch and PlayStation”.
Grubb’s comments were then quickly corroborated by Axios reporter, and former Kotaku editor-in-chief, Stephen Totillo, who in his most recent Game File newsletter said that “PlayStation is an obvious new platform for Sea of Thieves in terms of audience expansion,” despite not being able to “verify if Sea of Thieves to PlayStation is still an active plan for Microsoft”.
There she blows
Whatever way you look at it, Microsoft looks to be making movies behind the scenes that would seriously shake up its release strategy compared to before. For the longest time now – pretty much since the Xbox Series X|S generation kicked off – the platform’s mission has been to increase Xbox Game Pass subscribers. A viable plan up until now has been to bolster its library with Xbox exclusives and other smaller scale games, but the comments of Grubb and Totillo suggest that the tide is turning.
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I can’t help but think it’d be a major boon if Microsoft were able to port Sea of Thieves to at least Nintendo Switch, or whatever the Nintendo Switch 2 ends up being. Rare’s game is a rarity within the wider Xbox portfolio, in that it isn’t a gritty shooter or an RPG searching for realism; instead leaning on the more colourful, cutesy aesthetic one would expect from Nintendo. Its potential arrival on PlayStation appears more dubious to me, but anything is possible.
Microsoft or Rare are yet to officially comment on these rumours that first began circulating earlier this week. Better still, there’s nothing to say that this wasn’t once on the cards but has since been scrapped. We know as a result of the Microsoft Activision deal being approved last year that the Xbox platform is now committed to keeping Call of Duty on PlayStation consoles for at least the next 10 years and has designs to bring the series to Nintendo. This could be the canary in the coal mine for even more Xbox exclusives, such as Sea of Thieves, being ported elsewhere in future.
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