Sea of Thieves is "Fastest-Selling, First-Party, New IP" Game of this Generation

We’ve given Sea of Thieves a good ol’ fashioned review and came away from our adventures on the high seas with a more-or-less positive if uncertain vibe - good times were had, but the lack of content and things to do left us – and most players who have played it – feeling a little ripped off. For all the hype that had surrounded the game (drawing a number of not-completely-fair comparisons to No Man’s Sky, which was truly ludicrous in their marketing back in the day) it was a fairly shallow experience, and a lot of players are left scratching her heads wondering “Oh. Is that all?”

Well, it’s too little too late for that lukewarm reception, because as far as Microsoft and Rare are concerned, this lukewarm game is a massive success. Microsoft has announced that Sea of Thieves is the fastest-selling first-party new IP of this generation which… is a lot of qualifiers, so before you start thinking that’s impressive, let’s break it down:

Fastest-selling: Not best-selling, just fastest. It managed to reach two million in sales in the first week it was out.

First-party: Which means that there have doubtlessly been third-party games that managed to hit 2 million users – and beyond – far faster than this.

New IP: Limiting its competition to “first party” already made this feat less impressive, but adding that its only competing against non-sequels? That means it’s the fastest-selling game of only a small handful of Xbox One games. That’s not really impressive at all.

So why brag about it? It could be because it’s the only first-party game that can be played if you have the Game Pass (so far), a 10-buck-a-month service that lets gamers play whatever games they want. If the goal is to show other developers that sales won’t be slowed by letting their games be offered on Game Pass, then this weirdly specific announcement makes sense. Otherwise… it could just be more needless hype?

Who can say. Not me.