Xbox One users in Australia and beyond now have a tentative release window for the upcoming release of the multiplayer pirate adventure game Sea of Thieves.
Originally people were upset at Aaron Greenberg, the director of the Xbox Games global marketing team for not having a set in stone release date for the upcoming game. Knowing the release window should calm them down. Xbox Australia has confirmed that the window for the release of Sea of Thieves will be February 2017, according to IGN.
Rare has said that that Sea of Thieves will not be on MMO. Sea of Thieves lead designer Mike Chapman says that MMOs aren’t immersive, aren’t intuitive and have abstract mechanics, but says the following about what he wants Sea of Thieves to be:
“…we’re not only trying to make the ultimate pirate experience, we’re making this cooperative adventure game that’s easy to grasp, and it’s easy to see the situations that can result from that.”
The game will include ship upgrades, seafaring voyages, treasure hunts and reputation progression: what you want in a penultimate pirate game. Added into the game is a sense interpretation of a pirate’s intentions, whether they were good or bad. That is the world that Rare put into Sea of Thieves: one where your friends can be your friends or just pirates.
Rare also says that Sea of Thieves will not be a free-to-play game. In an interview with Eurogamer, Sea of Thieves design director Gregg Mayles says:
“One thing I can tell you is it’s not free-to-play. We didn’t say anything last year and then some people made stuff up, y’know, ‘it looks free-to-play!’ But we can clear that up – we will not be free-to-play.”
The confusion came with Microsoft trying to make games free-to-play. Some of the games Microsoft was toying with making free-to-play are Killer Instinct, Project Spark and Fable Legends. While Killer Instinct was released as a free-to-play game, Project Spark and Fable Legends were abandoned according to Eurogamer.
While gamers are awaiting the actual release date of Sea of Thieves, the release window is the next best thing. The game will be on Xbox One and Windows 10. It is currently unknown if that is the same release window in the US as it is in Australia.