We got an extended look Sea of Thieves gameplay at today’s Microsoft event at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. Highlights included showing how players can get shot out of a cannon onto an enemy ship as well as a persistent shared world.
The massively multiplayer online pirate game is one of GamesBeat’s most anticipated titles at this year’s E3, and it has been inching closer to final release with its latest invite-only technical alpha in May. Sea of Thieves comes from Rare, which is known for early classics like Banjo-Kazooie and Battletoads and, since its acquisition by Microsoft in 2002, Perfect Dark Zero and Viva Piñata. In 2015, the studio’s Rare Replay collection, which it released to celebrate its 30-year anniversary, became the most preordered game at E3.
Rare’s studio head Craig Duncan has highlighted Sea of Thieves’ emergent gameplay in the past, and a big draw of the game is its cooperative multiplayer mode where teams work together as a pirate crew and embark on adventures on the high seas.
Microsoft has been emphasizing Xbox Live, its online gaming platform that supports multiplayer games like Sea of Thieves as well as ecommerce. The company’s revenue from gaming has also been up year-over-year, generating $1.928 billion in Q3 of 2017.
