Shiver me timbers but Rare’s return to ‘proper’ games seems on course to be a major hit, if the stats from the latest beta are accurate.
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Microsoft’s first party line-up has been in for a lot of criticism lately, but the one definite highlight in their current schedule is Rare’s shared world adventure Sea Of Thieves.
It’s their first title since they stopped making Kinect games and it’s like nothing else they, or anyone else, has ever done before: an online co-op game where you get to roam the oceans as a grog-swilling, skeleton-fighting, pirate.
We’ve played it a number of times already – including at a recent trip to Rare HQ, which we can’t tell you about until next week – but the numbers from the closed beta show we’re not the only ones.
According to Rare’s figures there were 332,052 players in total, who spent more than 3 million hours on the (very nicely rendered) ocean waves.
If those numbers seem small though remember this is for a closed beta, so it was only open to those that had pre-ordered and a select few others. Rare haven’t said anything about an open beta yet, but it’s implied that will happen before the March 20 release date.
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The most important stat though is that the game managed to be #1 on both Twitch and Mixer, which is particularly impressive as the beta ran just as fellow co-op game Monster Hunter: World came out.
Sea Of Thieves proved more popular though, with an average of 104,240 viewers and 14,482,120 hours watched overall.
Which is exactly what Rare would’ve been hoping for, as they try to push their new IP. And suggests that Sea Of Thieves could be the most important Xbox One exclusive in several years.
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