Xbox’s Sea of Thieves Was the Most Downloaded PS5 Game in Europe in April

Sea of Thieves, one of the four Xbox exclusive games Microsoft decided to release on Sony’s PlayStation 5 as an “experiment” has apparently sold very well so far. The pirate game, which was released on the PS5 on April 30, was the most-downloaded game on the PlayStation Store in Europe in April. And it ended on the #3 position in the US right after the PS5 exclusives Helldivers 2 and Stellar Blade.

Sea of Thieves entering the top 3 of most PS5 downloads in the US and the EU in April after just a day on the PlayStation Store is indeed quite impressive. Thanks to six years of updates, the PlayStation 5 version of the game also has a better review score on Metacritic (81) than the Xbox and PC versions at 69 and 67, respectively.

During Microsoft’s Xbox business update delivered in February, Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming hinted that Microsoft could port more Xbox games to other platforms if that helps to ensure the “long-term health” of Xbox. “When we don’t damage Xbox and we can grow our business using what other platforms have to help us with that, we’re going to do that,” Spencer said at the time.

Well, it seems that Sea of Thieves passed the test with flying colors. With over 40 millions players since launch, it was certainly the most appealing game of the four Microsoft decided to bring to rival consoles this year. And now, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft sees an interest in releasing games from its core franchises like Halo, Forza, and Gears of War on PlayStation and Nintendo consoles.

In an interview with Bloomberg yesterday, Sarah Bond, the new President of Xbox was asked about the impact of Xbox’s recent multiplatform releases. This was the exec’s carefully-worded answer:

“It’s early days, I don’t have anything specific to share, but we’re very encouraged by the reception of our games. One thing that I think is important to note, as Xbox we’ve been putting games on other platforms for a long time. Minecraft is available pretty much universally, the teams at Bethesda, ABK, have games on other platforms. It’s a decision we make on a game by game basis as we move forward and continue to execute on our strategy.”

In that same interview with Bloomberg, Bond also announced that Microsoft is planning to release a web-based mobile game store in July. The exec also reiterated that Microsoft will continue to release all of its first-party games “across the whole slate” on Game Pass on day one, dismissing rumors that future Call of Duty games could be excluded from that.