Rare's sandbox multiplayer pirate adventure, Sea of Thieves , has come a long way. Since first hitting Xbox One and PC in March 2018, the developer has been working on a host of post-launch patches and free DLC – with more staff working on the title now than in the run-up to its original release.
The seafaring title continues to attract more players by offering continual improvements and additional content to the game's community, such as a move to include more storytelling elements in 2022 , which we're already seeing implemented.
According to Rare , within the game's first year, Sea of Thieves players collected and cashed in almost 750 million chests, skulls and items of cargo to amass a collective fortune of 642 billion gold. That number will have increased exponentially since, then, as the game has passed its third anniversary and has now amassed 20 million players since launch, with one million players now having reached ‘Pirate Legend’ status.
As of April 2022, we've now reached Sea of Thieves' sixth season but as an open-ended online service game, there's plenty more to come. To help you keep on top of what's new and what's coming up, we've put together this handy page which will be updated with all the latest announcements.
Sea of Thieves: Season Six
The latest Sea of Thieves update is Season Six. You can see the full trailer below, but this newest upgrade expands the game’s narrative and adds six haunted Sea Forts, with more content teased for further into the season.
Season Six has been available since March 2022 and it’s free for all players with Xbox Game Pass and across Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S , Xbox One, Windows 10 and Steam.
Sea of Thieves: A Pirate's Life
Sea of Thieves received a Pirates of the Caribbean crossover, which became available on June 22 2021 for Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S , Xbox One and PC. The game is available to download for Xbox Game Pass subscribers.
The trailer, which you can watch below, shows that players will encounter new enemies and challenges, such as cursed crews and bloodthirsty mermaids.
You can also learn more about how Sea of Thieves: A Pirate's Life came to be in this deep dive showcase video.
Sea of Thieves update news and patch notes
Season 6 is now underway and the latest update to the game, numbered 2.5.0.1, brings a bunch of fixes and improvements to the game, alongside its second limited-time Adventure.
These changes are detailed in full in the official Sea of Thieves release notes , but some highlights from season 6 overall include the addition of six haunted sea forts for on-demand combat encounters, a new Voyage, a new Plunder Pass and, of course, new items.
The download sizes for this latest update are as follows:
Sea of Thieves Twitch drops
Sea of Thieves isn’t just very playable, it’s very watchable and it’s hugely popular on Twitch. It’s not a surprise then, that Rare’s Twitch Drops are returning to the game for Season 6.
These allow Sea of Thieves players to claim brand new in-game items simply by tuning in each day to watch the streams of participating Sea of Thieves partner’s for at least 20 minutes. Each item will be available for 24 hours, beginning and ending at 10am BST, after which the daily reward will change.
The last set Twitch Drops came and went in March 2022 but we’ll update this page when a new one is announced.
How to play Sea of Thieves
Sea of Thieves is now available on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One and PC. It's possible to purchase the game outright, but you can also pick up an Xbox Game Pass subscription where the entire game is included.
If you're not sure whether Sea of Thieves is for you, picking up a Game Pass trial for free and playing the game for a short time through it is a good way to find out.
The game is not a port for PC or Xbox, it works equally on both and supports cross-play and cross-progression. The game runs at 60fps on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X owners can also play at 120fps. Xbox One players will have to make do with 30fps, while the PC version's are unlocked. Mouse, keyboard and controllers are all supported across console and PC, and you can cross-play across platforms.
Garmin unveils long-awaited Fenix 7, plus luxury Epix smartwatch
After months of speculation, Garmin has unveiled a new set of premium watches: the Fenix 7 series for serious sports training, and the luxury Epix (Gen 2) for everyday wear.
The Garmin Fenix 7 lineup includes three sizes (Fenix 7S, Fenix 7, and Fenix 7X), all of which are available in standard, solar, and solar sapphire editions. All of these have touchscreens in addition to the five physical buttons of previous Fenix watches, though this locks automatically during activity tracking to prevent accidents.
The Fenix 7 is aimed squarely at serious athletes aiming to improve their performance whether that’s in running, cycling, golf, swimming, or any of the myriad other sports supported. The big difference is that its advanced training tools are now more accessible, and it’s easier to use the watch together with the Garmin Connect app to create and follow a personal training plan that adapts along the way.
For example, the watch will show you a real-time stamina rating during workouts, which is a measure of how much energy you have left in the tank. If you’ve got plenty of energy left then you might want to push yourself a little harder, but if your stamina rating has dropped low, it’d be wise to wrap things up soon before it bottoms out.
Runners will benefit most from the Fenix 7’s new training tools. The watch will assess your training load throughout the week, and suggest a running session that will optimize your training (or a rest day if you’d benefit from taking it easy). You'll also be able to see a race time predictor at a glance, which will estimate your 5k, 10k, half marathon, and marathon finish times based on your current fitness level.
After any workout, the watch will estimate how long it’ll take for you to fully recover and be ready for your next session.
We’re currently putting the Fenix 7 Solar Sapphire to the test, and you can check out our hands-on review for our first impressions. We’ll be updating this review over the coming weeks as we spend more time with the watch’s training tools, and are able to judge its performance in the long term.
The Fenix 7 range starts at $699.99 / £599.99 / AU$1,049 for the standard version – a price increase of roughly 8% from the Fenix 6.
Epix adventures
While the Fenix 7 is built specifically for sports, the new Garmin Epix is a premium everyday watch. It's essentially a top-end counterpart to the Venu 2 , with the same bright high-res AMOLED display, plus a new sapphire crystal lens, titanium bezel, and a selection of higher-tier sports tracking tools.
The Epix tracks all the biometrics you’d expect from a Garmin watch , including heart rate, respiration, stress, sleep score, and energy. It also has a wide array of sports tracking profiles, including indoor and gym sessions, plus some more esoteric options like pickleball and padel (which were added to the Garmin Fenix 6 earlier this week).
Like the Venu 2, the Epix offers animated yoga and Pilates sessions to follow, plus custom training plans to help you prepare for an event or achieve a new personal best. The Epix also has the same stamina tracking as the Fenix 7, allowing you to see how much energy you have during a run and plan the rest of the session accordingly.
There’s on-board music storage for songs and playlists, and Spotify, Amazon Music and Deezer apps are all pre-installed. As with all Garmin watches, you can download additional apps, watch faces, and data fields (which show information during a workout) through the Garmin Connect IQ mobile app.
The Epix comes in three colorways: slate steel, black titanium sapphire, white titanium sapphire, and black titanium with a chestnut leather band. Its price starts at $899.99 / £799.99 / AU$1,399 direct from Garmin , which makes it one of the company's most expensive watches to date (though still cheaper than the premium MARQ Collection ).
It's hard to get excited for the Google Pixel 6a while the Pixel 6 still has problems
In the three months since the Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro launched, the company's hit a sour note. We sang the praises at first of all the new features and Google's successful reinvention after a few years of dull phones. That tune has since changed, and with the Pixel 6a on the horizon, we're struggling to muster up the enthusiasm we had at the launch of the original Pixel 6 models.
You see, it turns out there are a lot of Pixel 6 problems , and these bugs have been cropping up since launch. We've seen issues with Bluetooth, emergency calls, camera stability, audio playback, Wi-Fi connection, display aberrations and more.
How has Google responded? To its credit, the company has been diligently issuing patches targeting these problems. Unfortunately, some of their solutions have actually introduced new problems, inevitably doing more harm than good.
None of this spells good news for the Pixel 6a - neither for the phone itself, nor for its pre-launch hype.
Problems with the Pixel
Despite top hardware, we're a little hesitant to wholeheartedly recommend the Pixel 6 family because of the ongoing software issues.
The problem isn't just the bugs, as not everyone is affected by them. It's the uncertainty surrounding them; we don't know when new problems could pop up, what they could be or how they could affect the phone.
On multiple occasions, this writer has had to warn friends and family members who were considering buying a Pixel 6 about the issues the series has faced.
The issues have been going on for a few months now, despite Google's repeated attempts to fix them , which makes buying a new Pixel a bit of a risky investment.
Now is a pivotal time for the Pixel 6a
We're not expecting the Google Pixel 6a for a few months - so why are we writing this article now?
Well, the phone has just entered the first phase of its existence because we're starting to see the rumor-mill warm up. A recent leak pointed to a May release date for the phone . We suspect that in the coming months, more information about the device will be leaked.
More writers and tech fans are going to join the Pixel 6a discussion, and the tone of those conversations could dictate how enthused prospective buyers will by the time the phone is actually available.
So if the Pixel 6a leak stories are punctuated by tales of the Pixel 6 series breaking in new and annoying ways, people are going to associate the company's phones with bugs (and perhaps rightly so).
There's also the additional concern that the Pixel 6a, which should be a budget version of the Pixel 6 in terms of hardware, will have the same software as the 6, meaning any issues still present in Google's software will inevitably make their way over to the newer handsets.
A ticking clock
If Google can fix the Pixel 6 issues soon - and for good - it could stop the Pixel 6 problem news stories from bleeding into the Pixel 6a hype in any major way.
But if the Pixel 6a launch rolls around and we're still having trouble getting our Pixel 6 phones to work as intended, our vocal gripes could affect interest in, and sales of, the newer models.
This far ahead of the expected launch window, it's natural not to get too excited for the devices - especially since we've also got many major launches between now and then. But unless Google steps up in a major way, we're never going to be able to get beyond the disinterest we're feeling now.