Former Xbox Exclusive Is Reportedly Selling Great on PS5

Highlights

• Sea of Thieves has reportedly sold over 1 million copies on the PS5 since its late April 2024 debut on the PlayStation Store.
• Microsoft is hence estimated to have made more than $28 million from the game’s PS5 port.
• PlayStation still accounts for only a small fraction of the Sea of Thieves community, which hit 40 million lifetime players back in mid-April 2024.

Sea of Thieves has sold over a million copies on the PS5, according to a recently surfaced report. This newly emerged claim suggests that Microsoft’s PlayStation publishing push is off to a fairly strong start.

The PS5 version of Sea of Thieves launched on April 30, roughly one month following the sixth anniversary of its Xbox One and PC debut. The live-service pirate game is the first title that Rare released on PlayStation consoles in its 39-year history.

Sea of Thieves PS5 Port Reportedly Sold 1 Million Copies in Under 4 Months

Rare’s PlayStation foray apparently didn’t take long to start yielding some palpable dividends, with Windows Central’s Jez Corden reporting that Sea of Thieves has sold more than one million copies on the PS5, citing sources familiar with the matter. Given how the game’s PlayStation port is priced at $40 and taking Sony’s 30% revenue cut into account, this figure suggests that Microsoft has already made over $28 million from the Sea of Thieves PS5 port. At the same time, Sony would have pocketed $12 million from a million sold copies of a $40 PlayStation Store game.

Microsoft Likely Made Over $28 Million From Sea of Thieves PS5 Port

The actual amount of money that Sony and Microsoft made from the Sea of Thieves PlayStation version is ostensibly even higher because the game also includes microtransactions that let players buy cosmetics, emotes, and pets. Its early success in Sony’s ecosystem did not come out of the blue, as the game was already shaping up to be a huge hit even before its release. This was evident from the Sea of Thieves server issues that plagued it during the PS5 beta, which Rare said were partially caused by the game’s overwhelming PlayStation player traffic.

Sony’s current-gen console still accounts for but a fraction of the overall Sea of Thieves player base; ahead of the game’s PS Store debut, Rare revealed that its pirate action-adventure surpassed 40 million players, though that figure also includes Xbox Game Pass users. It is currently unclear how Sea of Thieves‘ commercial performance on the PlayStation Store compares to those of other former Xbox console exclusives that went multi-platform since the turn of the year. The first of those was Obsidian’s Renaissance murder mystery Pentiment, which made its way to the PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch in February 2024. As Dusk Falls and Hi-Fi Rush then reached Sony’s consoles in March, followed by Grounded debuting on the Switch and the latest two PlayStation consoles in mid-April.

By all accounts, Microsoft is just getting started with its multi-platform publishing push. The company has repeatedly suggested as much, having most recently done so by revealing that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is no longer an Xbox exclusive. Taking to the 2024 edition of Gamescom, Microsoft said that its upcoming Indiana Jones game will reach the PS5 in spring 2025 following a brief period of Xbox console exclusivity.