Sea of Thieves is free with new Xbox One X purchases for one week

Microsoft will include a free digital copy of Sea of Thieves with all purchases of a new Xbox One X console, the company announced. The promotion will run for just one week, kicking off Sunday, March 18 and running through Saturday, March 24.

If you haven’t already picked up the Xbox One X, this sounds like a good time to do so. While it’s up to retailers to offer any accompanying discounts on the $499.99 system alongside the promotion, getting a free copy of one of the console’s most anticipated games of 2018 is a nice bonus. Xbox console-exclusive games aren’t easy to come by these days — which only helps Sea of Thieves stand out even more.

There’s also an Xbox One S bundle available that may be a better deal for people who care more about the game, less about the console’s horsepower. Microsoft is offering a 1 TB system with Sea of Thieves and a select free game for $299 through its website; that bundle goes on sale March 20.

Existing Xbox One owners can also get Sea of Thieves at no additional cost if they are Xbox Game Pass subscribers. The first-party game will be available on day one though Microsoft’s subscription service.

Sea of Thieves turns players into pirates, who must either work together or against each other as they sail the seas. (They also can eat bananas by biting right into them, peel and all.) We’ve had a good time playing around in its closed beta earlier this year, making terrible pirate jokes and accidentally discovering the in-game corpse of our own Griffin McElroy.

Most notable to longtime fans is that Sea of Thieves comes from Rare, the famed studio that’s been churning out Microsoft exclusives for more than 15 years. Sea of Thieves will be Rare’s first new release since 2015, when it launches on March 20.