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Cross platform play confirmed for Sea of Thieves

Cross platform play confirmed for Sea of Thieves

Developer Rare has revealed that its upcoming pirate MMO Sea of Thieves will be playable across Windows 10 and Xbox One.

In a blog post on the game’s official site, community manager Cameron Thomas detailed how gamers on both platforms will be able to play each other, and the challenges therein.

“One of the things we’re very aware of is the need for the balancing to be right,” Thomas wrote.

“After running some recent tests, we found that PC players were 4.5% more efficient at killing skeletons than Xbox players, and this feels close enough that it’s something we’ll continue to monitor. However, PvP between platforms, or more importantly device input, is the big focus point for us as a Design team, and already we’ve been working closely with the Game Experience team to change the way the guns work to be better balanced for cross play. We’ve put in a bunch of telemetry around this, and with the change to guns it’s made them feel tonally so much more fitting, as previously they felt more like laser weapons than ancient plundered-and-pillaged gunpowder-driven blunderbusses.”

What’s more; Sea of Thieves is going to be shipping on the same day on both Windows 10 and Xbox, with Rare writing that the game is set for an early 2018 release. Until then, the studio will be relentlessly testing the game on both platforms.

“Ultimately here at Rare we felt that for Sea of Thieves to not be considered a ‘port’, the game would have to be delivered in complete feature parity with Xbox (along with all the extra bells and whistles that PC players expect), and more importantly it would have to be released on the same day for gamers on both platforms,” Thomas said.

“We’re here at Gamescom this week to announce that Sea of Thieves will ship in early 2018 on the same day for both Windows 10 and Xbox One. This is a powerful statement and one that’s truly important to us, and from now on every time we run a Technical Alpha it will be playable on both platforms – unless there’s something very specific that warrants testing only on one. It’s great being here on the Gamescom show floor and seeing people first-hand playing on PCs with a 21:9 monitor at 144Hz, or watching others playing at 4K/60 on a monster PC, and then others playing on an Xbox One – all having a great time together. It’s really magical once you’ve experienced it.”


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.