If you can believe it, it's been more than a month since we first heard rumours of Sea of Thieves going multiplatform, and a new social media tease from developer Rare has perhaps delivered our most concrete evidence of the move yet.
Taking to Twitter, the Sea Of Thieves account posted a short riddle mentioning the colours red, blue and green - which we all know to represent Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox respectively. They also followed the post up with a cheeky response about it all relating to Valentine's Day:
Of course, it's not all about that special day - with the team absolutely poking fun at all of the multiplatform rumours as of late. In fact, The Verge's Tom Warren had a little something to say in response to the original post as well.
As it turns out, tomorrow is also turning into something of a special day. The Official Xbox Podcast is bringing us a major episode where Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond and Matt Booty will address fans about the future of Xbox. Will we hear about Sea of Thieves there? Who knows, but it's starting to look likely!
What do you make of this Rare riddle? Discuss all of this down below!
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Buried in the message from the head of Playstation Hiroki Totoki about their future finances was "1st party can be grown with multiplatform."
He should also say Xbox can grow with the help of PlayStation
@BacklogBrad He's referring to PC, the quote is being taking out of context.
I really don’t think the tweet was meant to tease the situation. They are trying to calm people down not get them all upset again. The second post about the purple rowboat was like full three hours after the original.
Not to say the game isn’t going multi just that I don’t think they would have done a tease till after the podcast tomorrow.
@DennisReynolds it will be interesting to see the extent of their pivot. Where does it end with pc? Day 1? Does it end with pc? They are getting pretty involved with mobile ports. At what point does the 130 million switch users become too tantalizing? If SoT, hi fi see success do they consider xbox too?
The message is clear though, they also do not view exclusives as sustainable.
Grow, @Vipor007? I guess that's one direction it may take...
There is simply no way that Sony will put the likes of The Last of Us, God of War, or the Horizon games on the Xbox, @BacklogBrad. These are just some of the games that have grown PlayStation to the dominate position they currently hold (in terms of the two 'high-end' consoles). Sony would not want to diminish their strangle-hold they hold over Xbox by putting such games on their biggest rivals console...
@Fiendish-Beaver there is a difference between no games, some games, and all games going multiplatform. Sony wouldn't have to put god of War, etc. on xbox. I have been saying all week that Returnal would be a great choice. That game does nothing in someone deciding factors of which console to purchase. Similar to Hi Fi and Pentiment.
Timed exclusivity is also a best of both worlds approach.
@DennisReynolds @BacklogBrad It will be interesting to see where it ends up. High end AAA games are becoming unsustainably expensive, especially if they are only appearing on one platform. Something has to give.
Sony makes a few million on PC sales (it was just 1.8% of their total revenue from games last quarter) either they have to reduce the amount games cost to make or increase the number of sales. I think we will see more PlayStation games coming to PC, and possibly other platforms in future.
I believe this was ONE of the reasons for their push to live services, as gamers seem to accept those going to other platforms more readily, and if they hit it off they can make a lot of money, which can help fund the other games.
EDIT: Agreed on timed exclusivity
@BacklogBrad I kinda disagree that they do nothing to make someone buy a console. Sure each platforms aims to have a killer-app that is a system selling game. But there is nothing wrong with having a system selling library instead of a single game.
Pentiment, Sea of Thieves and especially Hi-Fi Rush are building blocks in that library. Or they would be if they stayed exclusive.
The library needs to build up until it becomes unmissable. Loads of people on NintendoLife seem to say “I don’t want anything from Xbox” and then follow it up with “except Rare Replay, and Hi-Fi Rush”. Gotta keep the hits coming
Sea of Thieves is amazing. I'll be getting to level 100 on the season pass tonight.
@K1LLEGAL that can work both ways. By focusing on the small but critical successes like Hi Fi and Pentiment (or returnal), it is like advertising your studios to new audiences. If they Play a few xbox games on their switch or ps5 it might change their narrative of xbox games weren't worth buying a console for. Then those new releases that are timed or permanently exclusive make the console more appealing to them.
Not to rag on Hi Fi (i thought it was pretty good) but it's player count is pretty low for the coverage it received. It's reported that 30-35 million people are subscribed to game pass yet the player count is 3 million for Hi Fi (that includes steam and Xbox sales). Looking at the achievement stats for it paints that 3 million as even worse. According to the achievements app 49.01% beat the 1st boss and 12.76% beat the final boss.
@XboxistheBestBox Phil Spencer once said that he dreamed of PlayStation Plus and Nintendo Classics being on Xbox, vice versa.
I think Microsoft is setting the way of the future.
I also think this opens up for Microsoft to do more acquisitions, without the fight of the commissions.
I see Microsoft going after Sega and a few smaller studios.
Returnal on the Xbox would be great, @BacklogBrad, but the fact that it can only be played on the PlayStation and the PC is why Sony won't put it on the Xbox. Is it something that people would buy a PlayStation for? Not on its own no, probably not. However, couple Returnal with all the other exclusives that the PlayStation has and it becomes one of those games people will try. Indeed, Returnal was the first game that I played on my PS5 when it released, so for me, it was very much something that interested me.
Ultimately, the point remains, the larger the library of exclusives games a console has, no matter how big in scale the games might be, the more likely people are to be swayed into buying a particular console. Equally, if Microsoft port formerly exclusive games to the PlayStation, then not only do they diminish the number of exclusives on the Xbox, but they bolster the number of games on the PlayStation. If you can only afford one console, you will go to where the most exclusives are available, and where you will find the most content. Anything Microsoft ports makes the PlayStation stronger, and the Xbox weaker, no matter the scale of the games...
You have hit the nail firmly on the head, @K1LLEGAL! I have been saying for sometime now, it is the collective of games that count, not just a single title. Each exclusive game that is ported to the PlayStation bolsters their overall collection, and ceases to be an exclusive on the Xbox in the process, thus weaking the reasons to buy the console...
I just cannot see Sony ever porting the likes of The Last of Us, God of War, Spiderman or the Horizon games to the Xbox, @XboxistheBestBox. These games are the entire reason why the PlayStation is outselling the Xbox 2 to 1. Its why they have a userbase in excess of 100 million, whereas the Xbox is half that.
I absolutely agree that these games cost a fortune to make, but if you look at Spiderman 2 alone, it has already sold in excess of 10 million copies. It has made its develop money back and then some. If people are buying your console in order to play the game, why on earth would you then put it on your biggest rivals too?
@XboxistheBestBox MS is porting games because the PS5 has double the sales of Series S/X and Phil has admitted they have "lost". The Series S/X are actually doing worse then X1 and its clear Daddy MS are getting more involved with Xbox.
@Fiendish-Beaver there is no denying that xbox has bolstered its exclusive offerings in the last few years. Despite this fact, the series X/S is not outselling the xbox One. So I disagree that more exclusives automatically means more users.
Also important is the acknowledgment from Sony that the exclusive model is not working and they are not seeing the growth they want. If they discover that putting games everywhere (not necessarily every game) means more money for Sony than the current model then who loses? No one.
@BacklogBrad I thought Hi-Fi Rush was awesome. Possibly my 2023 GOTY. But the first time I played it I thought the first level dragged a bit. So it took a while for me to get back to it. Maybe lots of others felt the same and unfortunately failed to return to it. But yea I do sigh at the fact Xbox players tend to not contribute to the games we really need on the platform.
I just really don’t think they should port out Hi-Fi Rush or Pentiment. Sea of Thieves I would accept if they said the game doesn’t have enough players to continue otherwise - then sure save the game. But I don’t think that is the case. Crazy that this will be the first Rare game on a Playstation.
From Playstation porting to Xbox - I think Marathon will be the test. If Xbox players contribute enough to Marathon’s metrics then you may see other live service games come over but probably the ones based on new IP and not based on Last of Us/GOW/Horizon/Spiderman etc. and no Single-player games.
Returnal is a good call though.
Sony gets green
Pc gets blue
Nintendo will also green
Xbox? I’m loosing hope.
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