Sea of Thieves could be released for PlayStation and Switch, it’s claimed

Sea of Thieves could be released for PlayStation consoles and Nintendo Switch, it’s been claimed.

Last week, the Nate the Hate podcast said Microsoft was planning to bring one of its “more acclaimed” first-party games to competing platforms this year.

Responding to this claim, Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb said Rare’s Sea of Thieves could be set to make the jump to Sony’s and Nintendo’s consoles.

“Sea of Thieves, I’ll say I’ve heard that that was one that might be coming to other platforms,” he said on Monday. “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”.

In his new industry newsletter Game File, former Kotaku editor and Axios reporter Stephen Totilo also said on Monday that he’d been told by a source that Microsoft has considered bringing Sea of Thieves to PlayStation, possibly for an early 2024 release.

The pirate-themed co-op multiplayer game released for Xbox One and PC in March 2018, when it became the first exclusive title from Microsoft to launch on Xbox Game Pass day-and-date with its retail release.

Microsoft said in July 2020 that Sea of Thieves had been played by over 15 million people, cementing its place as “the most successful new IP from Xbox this generation”.

An enhanced version of Sea of Thieves was released for Xbox Series X/S in November 2020, and Rare said in June 2022 that the game had attracted over 30 million players.

Some fans on social media have also speculated that the unnamed Xbox title reportedly headed to rival platforms could be Tango Gameworks‘ Hi-Fi Rush, the action game that hit Microsoft’s consoles this time last year. Grubb didn’t rule this out.

“I don’t know if this is necessarily a sign of a change in global strategy for how they approach Xbox going forward,” he said. “It seems like it might just be a case-by-case thing and they’re like, what’s the best thing for Hi-Fi Rush?

“Well, it would be nice to make a little bit more money and it would be nice to raise that franchise’s profile a little bit, because I know that they really like Tango Gameworks at Microsoft and they are growing that studio. These things are true and have been told to me and that came out in the wake of Hi-Fi Rush.

Further reading

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Xbox exec says Microsoft wants to bring Game Pass to PlayStation and Nintendo

Its “mission” is to have its first-party experiences on “every screen that can play a game”

“And then at the same time, Hi-Fi Rush could have made more money. They would have loved it if that game straight up made more money than it did.

“Of course. it was on Game Pass, and they were happy with it, they’re definitely happy with that studio. I think they’re like, what can we do to juice Tango Gameworks? What can we do to raise the profile of Hi-Fi Rush? And I think this is a card they’re willing to play sometimes.”