Xbox is “actually happy” with Sea of Thieves on PS5
Earlier this yr, Microsoft launched 4 Xbox exclusives — Grounded, Hello-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves — and Pentiment, on rival platforms. Shortly after its launch on PS5, Sea of Thieves dominated the PlayStation charts, changing into the best-selling digital PS5 sport in Europe for Might. Now, in a wide-ranging interview with Selection that touched on a number of matters, Xbox Recreation Studios head Matt Booty has mentioned Sea of Thieves on PlayStation and the way it’s impacted the sport on Xbox.
“We have been actually happy with what we have seen on Sea of Thieves,” Booty stated. “By way of some issues that I can share that have been encouraging to us is that after we launched Sea of Thieves on PlayStation 5, we noticed an uptick in engagement on Xbox and PC. There’s this factor the place you have received extra individuals coming into the franchise, which causes extra pleasure, which really grows the franchise general, which, if you wish to be actually direct about it from a enterprise perspective, permits us to proceed to reinvest in that franchise and proceed to develop it.”
Booty then revealed that about half of the Sea of Thieves gamers on PlayStation have been taking part in with different individuals on completely different platforms. “That is about increasing that group,” Booty stated. “It is one of many issues that is core to our Xbox promise about letting individuals play the place they need to play, with the individuals they need to play with, on the units they play with, and it is encouraging that we did not see type of a vertically insulated group there. The work the crew had put into being best-in-class by way of cross-platform play actually paid off as a result of we noticed individuals partaking exterior of their very own system ecosystem, which was nice. The opposite factor is it introduced new gamers into Sea of Thieves. One of many actual targets that each one of our franchises have, and one which all of us have throughout the business proper now, is ‘How will we develop?’ and it was actually nice to see that it was bringing in new gamers that had by no means performed Sea of Thieves earlier than. I feel we take into account {that a} success.”
Bearing on Microsoft’s Xbox unique technique, Booty reiterated that choices about bringing unique video games to different platforms will probably be made on a case-by-case foundation and that Microsoft is “dedicated” to having “launch exclusives” on Xbox.
“We’ll proceed to make these choices individually on a case-by-case foundation,” Booty stated. “We’re completely dedicated to having launch exclusives on Xbox. It is a part of our core promise, and we need to proceed to carry our video games to extra gamers on extra units going ahead. We definitely have gotten plenty of expertise with that with issues which have simply traditionally been multiplatform for therefore lengthy.”
Shortly after the Xbox Video games Showcase, Xbox boss Phil Spencer additionally spoke about bringing Xbox video games to extra platforms. In line with latest reviews, Hellblade 2, Age of Mythology: Retold, and Age of Empires II: Definitive Version are supposedly being thought of for launch on different platforms. One other rumor suggests a Halo: Fight Advanced remaster may very well be on the playing cards for a PS5 launch.
