Xbox Console Exclusive Teases PlayStation and Switch Ports

14.02.2024 - 21:11 / gamerant.com / Dominik Bo / Nintendo

The Sea of Thieves social media team appears to have started hinting at the game's arrival on the Switch and at least one PlayStation console. This development is yet another strong indicator that Xbox is planning a foray into multi-platform publishing, with Sea of Thieves being just one of several Microsoft games that have been rumored to be coming to its rivals' consoles in recent weeks.

The widely reported pivot in the company's game publishing strategy has already stirred quite a bit of online controversy, with some vocal Xbox fans incessantly arguing that such a move would diminish the value of owning a Microsoft-made console. Some fairly well-established insiders have also emerged from the drama worse for the wear by fueling the rumor mill and then retracting their claims about Xbox games going multi-platform.

But there indeed seems to be something to the claims that select first-party games from Microsoft are getting wider releases, as even the Sea of Thieves social media team now appears to be suggesting as much. Specifically, the game's official Twitter account has just commemorated Valentine's Day with some rather telling words that seem to hint at its PlayStation and Switch ports. «Rowboats are red, and sometimes they're blue, other times they're green,» reads the playful take on the well-known love poem Roses Are Red. This appears to be referencing the main brand colors of Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox, in that order.

The implications of the inclusive nature of the poem were not lost on Twitter users, even though the Sea of Thieves account had subsequently framed the tweet as merely a creative Valentine's Day message. Be that as it may, the game has long been rumored for a wider release, and was even mentioned in the upcoming Xbox event multi-platform lineup that leaked online earlier this week.

Aside from Sea of Thieves, the leak also mentioned Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment as being part of Microsoft's platform-inclusive publishing initiative. Those two games were alleged to be coming to PlayStation and Nintendo consoles in the immediate future, whereas Sea of Thieves is only understood to be launching on Xbox rivals later in 2024. All three ports are expected to be announced during the next episode of the Official Xbox Podcast airing at 3pm ET on February 15.

While Microsoft has reportedly already assured employees that Xbox consoles have a future, this attempt at boosting its gaming revenue by adding to its hardware rivals' software catalogs could still cannibalize its own console sales, which are already lagging behind its competitors. And while the scope of its multi-platform push remains to be confirmed, much like the initiative itself, some recent reports have suggested that the move will