Sea of Thieves, a first-person pirate adventure game will be one of the first Xbox Play anywhere titles to launch simultaneously on Xbox One and Windows 10 in the coming months along with Gears of War 4, Forza Horizon 3, Halo Wars 2, and more. But more important, the title will also be the first PC release for Rare, the British game studio that Microsoft acquired in 2002 and which is well known for its popular console games such as Killer Instinct, Perfect Dark Zero, and Kinect Sports.
Two weeks ago, Rare released the first episode of its “Inn-side stories,” which are short interviews of Rare developers discussing the game’s development process. Today, the second video of the series has been published and PC Design Lead Ted Timmins and Executive Producer Joe Neate explain how the team managed to develop the game for both the Xbox One and Windows 10.
In a blog post on Xbox Wire, Timmis explains that Rare chose early on to develop both versions of the game simultaneously. To ease the development process, Rare chose to develop Sea of Thieves with Unreal Engine 4, which is a game engine that natively supports the PC.
Timmis added:
This ensured our ambitions for both platforms were the same, and that we could deliver a consistent and awesome pirate adventure to fans. Being a First Person Adventure game, Sea of Thieves immediately feels right at home on the PC. When you combine this with a fantastical world full of 24/7 player-driven stories, it gives us a great opportunity to take full advantage of what a platform like Xbox Live offers to us as world builders and game developers, and allows us to create an experience catered for the needs of each platform.
Sea of Thieves is expected to be released in 2017 and we can’t wait to see if the prestigious game studio will deliver a game that is as much fun to play on a PC as on a console. Let us know in the comments if you’re looking forward to playing these games on both platforms.
