James Lynch 
Sea of Thieves has had an unusual start to life under Microsoft. Despite promising early signs, the game has drawn a number of criticisms from players for, despite fun gameplay, a distinct lack of content and replayability. This was such a problem that Xbox boss Phil Spencer had to defend the game which was, by this point, drawing comparisons to the colossal disappointment of No Mans Sky. Despite all of this, it seems the game has greatly outstripped its initial sales targets, reaching its three month player goal in a single day. Although it is currently unclear how many of those people purchased the game outright, and how many enjoy it via Game Pass, this is still a hugely impressive figure.
The head of Rare Joe Neate, who developed the game, had this to say when speaking of the games success:
“We beat all of our sales numbers that we had planned.” One day one, they met targets they hadn’t expected to reach until the end of June. He says “it was fascinating” because Sea of Thieves was the first Xbox first-party title to hit Game Pass on release day, and “for the most part you kind of never want to be the first. You want to learn from someone else on things like that.”
Despite the trepidation it does look as though this was a good decision, as the Game Pass allows players to come and try the game again after the regular content updates. The games initial release reputation would have made people less willing to buy the game, but if it is already included as part of a package, what have they got to lose by trying it? Neate goes on to say that the game’s success is “correlated to our playerbase.” which does recognise that the games success is tied in to its player count and this is helped enormously by Game Pass.
Sea of Thieves is available now for PC and Xbox One
