Usually, when developers talk about PC ports of big games, they emphasize top-tier performance. The best possible graphics, the highest resolutions. God rays, 4k, a million frames per second. Rare, though, has taken a different approach with Sea of Thieves.
The game, Rare says, will run capably on a whole host of different PC configurations thanks to a long-running technical alpha test that allowed the developer to optimize for a variety of PC configurations. It even created a chart that looks kinda like a pirate map, if pirates mapped out computers and worked at Newegg instead of in the ocean:
“Our rendering team set themselves the goal early on of ‘how low can we go,’ sometimes also referred to fondly as ‘getting the game running on a potato,’ which is why we want to deliver a great version of the game even for those with computers below our official minimum spec,” Rare wrote on Sea of Thieves’ website, adding that while the game is playable on low spec laptops, it will of course look extra nice running on a high spec machine, as well.
Sea of Thieves will be out on March 20.