Yesterday Rare announced that Sea Of Thieves has hit the milestone of 40 million players. The milestone put’s the game amongst the biggest games in the world in a climate where 5 Million is a solid number. This got me thinking, is Sea Of Thieves now one of the biggest and most important IP’s for Xbox in 2024?
First off lets get this out of the way. Yes this is players and not sales. With the game being available on Xbox Game Pass it’s quite obvious the game has not sold 40 million copies. Having said that it’s still sold a lot. In 2021 they announced 5 million in sales on Steam alone and the game has continued to grow, and that doesn’t include Xbox sales. It’s so rare that we even get sales figures for an Xbox published game so its hard to truly understand any sales figures beyond speculation.
Now if I was having this conversation about 2 years ago it would be an entirely different conversation. It’s not that Sea Of Thieves wasn’t big 2 years ago, it’s that Microsoft went out and bought a couple publishers. You may have heard (of course you’ve heard) Microsoft and Xbox are now the owners of Activision and Bethesda, which are home to games such as Call Of Duty, Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Two years ago I could make an argument that Sea Of Thieves might be the biggest IP under the Xbox umbrella outside of Minecraft.
I still might make that argument today if you take away the new purchases. Halo isn’t what it once was and we haven’t seen a Gears Of War in ages. You can make a case for Forza Horizon as well. It has the pedigree, critical acclaim and gets new iterations every couple years. That is maybe the one thing holding Sea Of Thieves as an IP back, it’s only 1 game.
One thing that is certain in my mind though, is that Sea Of Thieves is the single most important game for Xbox in 2024. That might sound crazy but hear me out. When Xbox announced 4 games were heading to PlayStation and Nintendo I personally thought it was a test. Try out these 4 games and see how they do elsewhere and that will directly affect the course of Xbox moving forward. With all due respect to Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment and Grounded, Sea Of Thieves is the one that is the true test. If Sea Of Thieves performs well, which at least based on pre-orders its off to a good start, I fully expect to see more Xbox games head to PlayStation and Nintendo in the future.
For that reason alone it’s gotta be the most important game for the future of Xbox. But what about the biggest IP’s? We can get the obvious out of the way. Now that Xbox owns Activision they arguably own 2 of the 3 biggest gaming franchises in the world in Call Of Duty and Minecraft. After that it’s pretty easy to point at Fallout and Elder Scrolls. But what is the 5th biggest IP for Xbox?
While I absolutely adore Sea Of Thieves, I think we still need to give Halo and Gears the benefit of the doubt. While Halo isn’t what it was in the 360 days its still one of the most recognizable IP’s in gaming and anytime a new game is announced fans go into a frenzy. Would that happen if Sea Of Thieves 2 got announced? Maybe. And while Gears has been out of the spotlight for awhile I think when Gears 6 gets announced it will be massive. But I think Sea Of Thieves is closer to both of those IP’s than anyone wants to admit. The only other 2 games that really have a case are Starfield and Forza but I think those are just a tier below right now.
So as it stands right now for me this would be my personal list….
- Call Of Duty
- Minecraft
- Elder Scrolls
- Fallout
- Halo
- Gear Of War
- Sea Of Thieves
- Forza Horizon
- Starfield
- Doom
Considering some of the games on this list I’d say it’s pretty clear Sea Of Thieves is a force for Xbox and might continue to climb this list once it releases on PlayStation and later on Nintendo. I’m sure this is a bit controversial so I’d love to hear your answers in the comments below.
