Xbox is testing the waters of cross-platform games, porting a handful of games to the PlayStation 5, PS4, and Switch. The experiment seems to be going well so far, with Obsidian Entertainment’s Grounded and Rare’s Sea of Thieves seeing a massive spike in popularity.
Xbox games Grounded and Sea of Thieves climb PS5 sales chart
This information comes from Mat Piscatella from the market research company Circana. “Sea of Thieves was the 4th best-selling game of April, following its launch on PlayStation platforms during the month,” said Piscatella. “The title ranked 55th on the March best-selling titles chart. Sea of Thieves was the #3 best-selling game on PlayStation platforms in April.”
Grounded didn’t break the top ten but arguably saw an even more impressive jump. Xbox’s co-op survival game climbs from #167 in March to #12 in April. Circana reports it was the 9th best-selling game on PlayStation 4 and 5.
The success of Grounded and Sea of Thieves may bode well for more Xbox Game Studios games coming to PlayStation. It was one of four Xbox games ported to Sony consoles, alongside Grounded, Hi-Fi, Rush, and Pentiment. However, a report from early April suggests that Microsoft was looking particularly closely at Sea of Thieves to gauge whether it’s worth porting more games to PlayStation and Switch.
In February, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer didn’t rule out bringing Starfield and the New Indiana Jones game to PS5. The popularity of Bethesda’s sci-fi action RPG fell off quickly post-launch, but MachineGame’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle still has a chance to impress. Halo Infinite is another Xbox game that’s not off the table for PS5.
