If you had told me a year ago that an Xbox Game Studio game would be the best selling game on PlayStation in May 2024 I'd assume a new Minecraft was announced and launching in May. If you then told me it was Sea Of Thieves I probably would laugh and call you crazy. No one is laughing anymore.

That's right, Sea Of Thieves was the best selling game in the US and Europe on the PlayStation 5 according to PlayStation themselves. Fun fact Xbox had a sweep on PlayStation in May as Minecraft topped the list in both regions on the PlayStation 4. For developer Rare it's great. Anytime you can be a best selling game somewhere that's a win. Happy for that team. For Xbox it's a win too. I doubt they ported these games in hopes they'd fail. I'm sure PlayStation and their fans are quite happy as well.

The question is, what all does this mean moving forward? We already know more Xbox games are coming to PlayStation after Phil Spencer's interview at IGN Live. We also know Doom The Dark Ages and Call Of Duty Black Ops 6 are coming to PlayStation, both of which are technically Xbox first party games now. What we don't know is what Spencer meant by his comment. Was he referring to legacy titles like Doom? Was he referring to more and if so what? And has the Sea Of Thieves sales on PlayStation changed their mind in any way one way or another?

Jumping To Conclusions

As social media is prone to doing, this announcement has led to all kinds of instant reaction. Sea Of Thieves just finished first in sales the floodgates are open! It's an easy conclusion to jump to, even if it's not necessarily the right one.

It's a fantastic result for Sea Of Thieves for sure, but it's also in a slow month and we have no actual sales figures. If it topped the charts with 2 million sales that's a lot different than if it topped the charts with 250k in sales. Both are still great, but the numbers are important. Unfortunately since it's Microsoft I doubt we ever see a sales figure to know. That isn't to take away from the result or diminish it either, but it's worth noting. It will be probably more telling for us to see if it stays on the charts for long.

The other element to this all is the fact that the 3 other games Xbox launched on PlayStation, Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment didn't exactly light the PlayStation world on fire. Now to be fair those are much smaller games (they are also much newer games) than Sea Of Thieves and therefore the results would be weighed differently. But still does 1 successful launch mean as much or more than 3...meh launches?

The other element here is the types of games. The industry as a whole is shifting to wanting live service games in the hands of as many people as possible. Even PlayStation themselves is shifting to a PC and PlayStation launch for their live service games with great results so far. Perhaps this along with the other results simply signals to Xbox that live service on PlayStation is the way to go and keep the single player games to Xbox and PC.

Either option could play out. But I wouldn't put all my eggs into either basket just yet after one good month for one game

Pettiness On The Horizon

The other element to this is what, if anything comes of PlayStation and LEGO announcing a LEGO Horizon game coming to everything but Xbox. If there was ever an easy game to put on Xbox this was it. It's an easy sell to PlayStation fans just like MLB The Show was. "Hey, LEGO wanted it and can't argue that". Clearly Sony said no to an Xbox port. Will Xbox see that as a them extending an olive branch putting their games on PlayStation and PlayStation immediately breaking the branch? Only time will tell.

Also side note here. I saw it making the rounds that maybe both sides didn't want it on Xbox because there wouldn't be a big enough return on investment which makes zero sense to me. All the LEGO games are on Xbox so why would LEGO suddenly decide it's not worth it?

Again this leaves us with a lot of questions and not many answers on how Xbox will react to that. Ultimately I think they are sitting in their offices privately saying "what the hell?" but it won't actually change any decisions they were planning on making.

Regardless of what happens the industry, and specifically the console side of it is in a very weird, transitional state with Xbox at the forefront of it. It's a very slippery slope for them to work with now that they've opened Pandora's box so to speak.

The next move they make will be fascinating.