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MS: Sea of Thieves is Our 'Fastest-Selling First-Party New IP of This Generation'

MS: Sea of Thieves is Our 'Fastest-Selling First-Party New IP of This Generation' - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 April 2018 / 5,957 Views

Microsoft and Rare have announced more than two million people have played Sea of Thieves in its first week.

The game is also the company's "fastest-selling first-party new IP of this generation" and the "best-selling Microsoft Studios first-party title on Windows 10." This does not include people playing via Xbox Game Pass, according to Aaron Greenberg.

Sea of Thieves is out now for the Xbox One and Windows PC.


A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.


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52 Comments
DaveTheMinion13 (on 28 March 2018)

QB was the previous holder, and it didn't sell well....not surprised 2 years later this did somewhat better.

  • +21
Mr Puggsly DaveTheMinion13 (on 29 March 2018)

They said it includes any MS Studios game. So that might actually be Ryse. They sold fairly well as a launch game.

  • 0

Ryse didn't do that great, QB was the previous holder for "fastest selling new ip".....and we know it struggled out the gate. Fastest selling only means that first week

  • +7
Ganoncrotch (on 28 March 2018)

First party new IP of this generation from MS....

Well that's a long list.

  • +15
Mystro-Sama (on 28 March 2018)

Imagine all the players who got disappointed 3 hours in.

  • +13
adisababa (on 28 March 2018)

Sold better than Quantum Break. WOW, WHAT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT!!! I guess early access games are all the rage now.

  • +12
Madword adisababa (on 28 March 2018)

I know its been a while, but thats a sad indictment of single player games, and only re-enforces MS stance on Gas games rather than SP.

  • 0
Lucca adisababa (on 28 March 2018)

Hey Madword, did you see last year's best-sellers? Super Mario Odyssey, BoTW, Horizon ZD, Crash Trilogy, AC Origins, Resident Evil 7, all in the top 20, and all single-player-only games. Single-player games will sell if they're good. But Quantum Break was not good.

  • +5
Ganoncrotch (on 28 March 2018)

Wonder will we get official sales figures... or just find out how many cannonballs were fired by pirates during launch week? Those all important numbers we love so much.

  • +10
Azzanation Ganoncrotch (on 28 March 2018)

I love it when they do that. Shuts the industry up. Sales nunbers are not important either. I hope MS continue to avoid giving sales numbers out regardless if it sold good or bad.

  • -10
VGPolyglot (on 28 March 2018)

I thought it was MS first party, rather than first party in general.

  • +10
  • -12
Nuvendil (on 29 March 2018)

Given the competition for this award, not sure it's much an achievement.

  • +9
Medisti (on 28 March 2018)

For reference, how many first-party new IPs has Microsoft had this generation?

  • +8
Xen (on 29 March 2018)

It ain't all that difficult when one can count their new IP's this gen on one hand.

  • +6
AlfredoTurkey (on 29 March 2018)

I've seen shifted goal posts before but this... wow.

  • +4
xMetroid (on 28 March 2018)

Glad it sold well. It will encourage MS to invest in exclusives more and also i know a guy that worked on the game and they are really passionate about it:)

  • +3
bananaking21 (on 28 March 2018)

"Sea of Thieves is the 'Fastest-Selling First-Party New IP of This Generation' - News"

no its fucking not. its the fastest MS first party new IP of this generation. check your facts before you post "news"

  • +3

Who you calling Pinhead?

  • -7
KLAMarine bananaking21 (on 28 March 2018)

"MS: Sea of Thieves is Our 'Fastest-Selling First-Party New IP of This Generation' - News"

Was the title of this article different at some point?

  • 0
bananaking21 bananaking21 (on 28 March 2018)

@klamarine it was exactly as I quoted it in my post. It didn't say MS's first party. But all first party games this gen. Which is absurd.

  • +1
KLAMarine bananaking21 (on 28 March 2018)

Ah, I see. Thanks.

  • 0
ship31 (on 29 March 2018)

The game will be better in 2 years. But until then... who wants to run Squads on Battle Royal?

  • 0
Azzanation (on 28 March 2018)

MS's best new IP this gen to me is Ori however Sea of Thieves is a great game and it will only get better. Alot in here dont understand its MS's fastest selling IP not the industies. Good on MS and Rare. Great signs. Lets hope the game keeps its momentum until its next major update.

  • 0
Jranation (on 28 March 2018)

Gald to see the reading skills of Vgchartz user. And Yes I was one of them too xD

  • 0
Lucca Jranation (on 29 March 2018)

The title was "Sea of Thieves is THE 'Fastest-Selling First-Party New IP of This Generation' - News" at some point. And it is not.

  • +2
Tridrakious Jranation (on 29 March 2018)

Even if that was the case. People on here were bringing up Super Mario Odyssey and Destiny...

  • 0
Jranation Jranation (on 29 March 2018)

Oh damn! I was too late to see it

  • 0
TranceformerFX (on 28 March 2018)

Fastest selling? The game has barely been out a week and they have concrete numbers already? Okay, well then what are the numbers? Because I DO NOT see this outselling Mario Oddessey or Horizon Zero Dawn.

  • 0
Stuart23 TranceformerFX (on 28 March 2018)

He said new first party IP, Mario Odyssey is a huge seller but it is not a new IP.

  • +4
Lucca TranceformerFX (on 28 March 2018)

Mario Odyssey is not a new IP, but I doubt Sea of Thieves outsold Horizon ZD.

  • +6
Slownenberg TranceformerFX (on 28 March 2018)

He also said it is Microsoft's fastest selling first party title of the generation. He's only talking about Microsoft, not Sony and Nintendo.

  • +8
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newwil7l (on 28 March 2018)

No idea why people here were trying to say it was a flop.

  • 0
Lucca newwil7l (on 28 March 2018)

The game was disappointing to a lot of people, but financially it's silly to say that it's a flop.

  • +10
Megiddo (on 28 March 2018)

Selling more than Ryse, Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break, Ori, and Recore's first week is an accomplishment.

I hope they decide to implement content into the game.

  • 0
Lucca Megiddo (on 28 March 2018)

That's honestly not much of an accomplishment. Ryse was not a big seller first week since most people still didn't have an Xbox One. Sunset Overdrive also didn't sell that well, didn't even reach 1.5M lifetime. Quantum Break flopped, sold less than 1M LT. Ori wasn't such a big hit, it was more of a niche game. Not much of a first-week seller but had legs. ReCore was one of the worst first-party flops of this generation.

  • +7
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TheBird (on 28 March 2018)

Good news for this game, deserves every good thing coming for it, best game to come out in years honestly. People say it lacks content, but they lack the basic ability to have fun.

  • -10
kazuyamishima (on 28 March 2018)
  • -18
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bettergetdave shikamaru317 (on 28 March 2018)

Thanks a lot for explaining this. You always have to take MS's accomplishments with a grain of salt and carefully analyze them. They like to use fuzzy math and other weird things to make them sound special.

  • +8
Lucca shikamaru317 (on 28 March 2018)

Yeah, Microsoft always tries to use tricky words and phrases in order to make people think that something is what it isn't. Technically they aren't lying, but they're not exactly being honest and transparent. Just look at their E3 last year and all the games they called "exclusives".

  • 0
Azzanation shikamaru317 (on 28 March 2018)

Erm i dont know how this is a tricky sneaky thing to claim? Its there fastest selling new IP, how hard is that to grasp?

  • -3
maxleresistant shikamaru317 (on 29 March 2018)

Ryse, Sunset Overdrive and Quantum Break were all failures in terms of sales (let's not kid ourselves, if it wasn't, sequels would have been in development). Recore, Blind Forest and Cuphead did good though, mainly because they had a much smaller budget and didn't need to sell as much.

But Sea Of thieves cost a lot of money, so it folds into the first category, and will need to sold a lot. We'll see, but I don't see the game having a long life.

  • -1
Raviel shikamaru317 (on 29 March 2018)

@maxleresistant
I'm not gonna say that you're wrong, because you're probably not but as far as I know, we don't know how much SoT cost to make but since dev-time has been quite long I'd assume that makes it expensive.

We have to consider how they determine success before we claim it to be a failure. If we talk just sold as in going to the store (physical/digital), we don't know that number. We know that right now, it has had 2 million players who've "set sail". We don't know how many stopped playing since launch, we don't know how many played it through Game Pass.

As for it being a financial success or not. How many bought Game Pass to play it? How many did not return it after buying it in store? Out of the 2 million players, how much did they make? We don't know yet. Your speculation could be correct, it probably is, I'm just trying to add some perspective :P

  • 0
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