Microsoft says Sea of Thieves sold well, even without counting Game Pass copies

Now with over 2 million players, Microsoft has hailed Sea of Thieves as both its “fastest-selling first-party new IP of this generation” and the "best-selling Microsoft Studios first-party title on Windows 10," later noting that that praise is without counting the copies of the game given away through Game Pass.

While that might seem like a fair number of caveats attached to the “fastest-selling” praise, the game’s sales momentum should be of note to game developers as this is the first big first-party game to arrive to Microsoft’s subscription-based Game Pass as a launch-day release.

Back in January, Microsoft revealed that it would be adding all upcoming first-party Xbox One releases to the Game Pass library as soon as they launched, accessible for so long as players pay $9.99 a month to keep their subscription active. State of Decay 2 and Crackdown 3 are slated to launch under the same system. 

Though Microsoft has unfortunately not shared exactly how many copies Sea of Thieves has sold in its first week on shelves, Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg did note that the game’s status as the “fastest selling new IP” for the Xbox One was achieved without a boost from copies given away through Game Pass.

While it’s not as useful as a metric as sales, Microsoft has shared that, seemingly counting Game Pass this time, Sea of Thieves has attracted 2 million players in roughly one week across both Xbox and Windows. That comes after the game saw more than one million players on its launch day alone.