Sea of Thieves is a surprise hit for Microsoft. The game has not only managed to sell a lot, it is also one of the most successful new IP for the Xbox platform this generation. While there haven’t really been many new IP games with the scope of Sea of Thieves, it is still a remarkable achievement nonetheless and one that is well deserved for Rare who is long overdue a success.

This information was revealed by Rare in an interview with GameInformer by Rare’s Studio Head, Craig Duncan. When Sea of Thieves launched, Microsoft initially reported 2 million players for it within its launch week. The total number now is more than 4 million and the average playtime for these players is 22 hours, which is a lot for a game that was criticized for lack of content.

“Sea of Thieves is the most successful new IP of this generation for Xbox and we’ve got four million players, our average playtime is like 22 hours, we have people who have already put in more than 1,000 hours, and five percent of all Sea of Thieves players have streamed the game, all of which we’ve talked about before, ” said Duncan in the interview.

“We’ve got three teams working on separate content and we’re about to add a fourth. What we’re trying to do, and this might sound a bit nuts and bolts… obviously, when you run up to launch we had a team kind of working on A.I., gaining experience, and the quest system and that kind of thing. Now we’re live. The Hungering Deep team kind of worked on that for launch to when we shipped it.”

Sea of Thieves is available now for the Xbox One and Windows 10.