Sea of Thieves was one of the early titles to enjoy the benefits of Microsoft’s dual-platform approach to first-party titles. It was available on both Xbox One and PC at launch, but the early numbers skewed heavily in favour of console players. But now, according to the developers themselves, the game’s enjoying a 50/50 split between console and PC.
11 million people have played Sea of Thieves in 2020 alone – that’s more than the player count in 2019, which in turn was bigger than the player count in the launch year of 2018. “Obviously, part of that was contributed to by our Steam launch“, executive producer Joe Neate explains. “We saw over 1 million people come in on that first month on Steam. We’ve seen continued growth since then. We’ve seen players from Korea and China really add to the growth of the community worldwide.”
Neate says that “now we’re actually at about 50/50 between PC and console, in terms of what our player base is made up of. I really love the mix and the makeup that we have across our community”.
Early estimates of the Sea of Thieves player count suggested that there were just under 300k PC players versus 1.7 million on Xbox One at launch. That’s likely a rough estimate, but it’s far from the equal split Rare’s boasting of today.
The bulk of the new video for Rare’s take on pirate games looks at the new seasonal structure for Sea of Thieves. We’re saying goodbye to monthly updates in favour of seasons and a battle pass.