During the Microsoft presentation at last week's Gamescom, Rare announced that "no asterisk" crossplay is coming to Sea of Thieves at launch—an all-encompassing feature that'll let PC players face off against their Xbox counterparts.

Despite sounding like a marketing term, the game's PC design lead Ted Timmins tells me "no asterisk" is instead an indicator of inclusiveness across desktops and consoles, no matter the hardware you're playing on.

At launch Sea of Thieves will have wide FOVs and will support 4K and 60fps, says the game's executive producer Joe Neat, however those playing on less powerful machines will be considered too.

"We're trying to go as low as possible," explains Neat. "We have an idea of what the minimum specs are but aren't quite ready to reveal them. We've actually been inviting people below our current plan for minimum specs into the technical alpha so we can test a number things on the performance side. This game looks so great regardless of the device you're playing on. Of course it's gonna look great in 4K, 60fps but it also looks great at minimum spec because the art style is purposefully timeless."

Timmins adds: "We've actually added a 540p mode, so you can go below HD. We've also added a 15 fps framerate lock because when we were talking to the community some people were like: I'm actually happy playing 15 frames per second. We were like: that's actually really cool, we should support that. And to them go to them and say, oh, we've added that mode for you—it's below our Rare certified min spec, but if you're enjoying the game, why should we as developers knock you for that?"

Sea of Thieves is without a concrete launch date, however is expected to launch at some stage next year.