Some interesting information from the Phil Spencer interview over at Kotaku as Stephen Totilo published an excellent interview with the head of Xbox.
It’s general knowledge that Sea of Thieves ran into rough seas at launch, and suffered because of the little content available at launch, it was quickly forgotten but managed to stay afloat thanks to supportive streamers on Twitch. I reviewed it and found it to lack any incentive to return after several hours. I wasn’t a huge fan and moved on after my review.
As it were, I was invited to spend some time at Rare in April with the massive Anniversary Update, which introduced Tale Tales, a new narrative-based adventure and the Arena, a new PvP mode where teams battled each other while collecting gold. I left Rare with excitement and anticipation about all the new content being worked on and the second life Sea of Thieves gained thanks to this update.
Seeing this quote from Phil Spencer, when speaking about how good Xbox Game Pass has been for some games, and how the way things worked out for Rare is why we got the Anniversary Update. “Sea of Thieves is a good example. At launch, and I read all the same feedback everybody else did was: ‘Where’s the other half of the game?’ But I would also say it’s a game where what it is today wouldn’t be what it is if we had just waited another year and kept it to ourselves,” Phil Spencer said, “It is a game that was literally created with the feedback of the community, and how you manage that through the traditional lens of how people think about what a game launch means is interesting for all of us.”
More games are likely benefitting from Xbox Game Pass, allowing gamers to play over 100 games with more being added all the time.
Source: Kotaku
