While Rare’s Sea of Thieves got off to a very slow start back in 2018, the game has steadily become a major success for Microsoft. Back in June, Sea of Thieves hit 15 million players with over 3.3 million unique players playing over the course of the month.
As a result of this success, it seems Microsoft and Rare have no intentions to abandon Sea of Thieves as the next-generation approaches. In fact, the official Sea of Thieves Twitter account has revealed the game is getting a boost in performance on both the Xbox Series X and S consoles.
With next-generation consoles almost upon us, both Sony and Microsoft are deciding how to handle their respective first party IP. While plenty of third party titles like Dirt 5 and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War have cross-generational features, first party studios are deciding how to move forward with certain titles. Now, it seems Rare and Microsoft are dedicated to carrying Sea of Thieves into the next generation of Microsoft consoles. The official Sea of Thieves Twitter account has detailed what upgrades players can expect on both Xbox Series consoles.
Players purchasing an Xbox Series X can expect Sea of Thieves to run at a smooth 60 FPS in 4K resolution. Players playing on the Xbox Series X can also expect that same smooth 60 FPS but the game will only be able to run at 1080p. Additionally, players on both consoles can expect faster load times across the board. The news of current-generation titles getting boosted for next-gen comes from both Microsoft and Sony, as Sony just confirmed that Days Gone is getting a PS5 upgrade as next-gen approaches.
Since it seems as if both the PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles will be focusing on performance boosting over an overhaul in graphical fidelity, bringing current-gen games to next-gen hardware shouldn’t be incredibly challenging. Though titles like Days Gone and Sea of Thieves differ from one another in terms of style and genre, both have proven to be successes for Sony and Microsoft respectively. In fact, Microsoft may have a bit of a harder time managing Sea of Thieves’ continued life, seeing as it is a multiplayer title that has to receive new content over time to stay afloat. Luckily, Sea of Thieves’ Fate of the Damned update was a great sign for things to come.
The news that Sea of Thieves is getting supported into next-gen is great news for new and old players. Rare has managed to achieve a fantastic second life with the game, so the opportunity to maybe bring it to a new audience through next-gen is great. All Rare has to do is sustain Sea of Thieves with more free updates and interesting new content. Hopefully, Sea of Thieves players look forward to sailing into the next-generation with some boosted performance.
Sea of Thieves is out now for Xbox One and PC.