You can play Sea of Thieves right now anywhere in the world
Sea of Thieves doesn't officially go live until midnight in most of the world, but you can play it right now.
Sea of Thieves obviously launches at midnight in the US and UK, but the game has officially gone live for those in Australia and New Zealand.
Changing your Xbox One's or PC's region to either of the two countries will allow you to play now rather than wait for your region's official go time. Unfortunately, if you already have a pre-order, you may be out of luck.
Since Sea of Thieves is a Microsoft first-party title, it's one of the games that are going to be available in Xbox Game Pass on the day of release. Meaning, anyone with a Game Pass subscription will be able to play alongside day-one owners.
Sea of Thieves is also a Play Anywhere game, so it's available on PC.
Unlike copies pre-ordered through the store, Xbox Game Pass does not appear to have the regional launch time restriction. In other words, if you have an active Game Pass sub you can easily switch your PC or Xbox One region to Australia/New Zealand and start playing as soon as the download is done.
If you do not have an active subscription, and have not used any Game Pass trials in the past, you can still get a 14-day trial through the store. This gives you full access, which means you can do the region change trick and join the rest of us.
This works on PC, and Xbox One, just make sure you subscribe to the trial first before switching your region.
This also works if you have a digital pre-order, but it may cause issues with your full copy when your subscription ends. This shouldn't happen, but Microsoft's been having trouble with this bug recently, preventing some from accessing games they own after not renewing Game Pass.
How to subscribe to Xbox Game Pass and change regions on PC
- Search for Xbox Game Pass in the Microsoft Store
- Pick the 14-day trial option, or buy a month's subscription
- Hit Start, go to Settings and pick Time & Language
- Hit Region & Language in the left panel and change your country to New Zealand
- After restarting the PC, you should now have access to the New Zealand store
- Download and play Sea of Thieves
How to subscribe to Xbox Game Pass and change regions on Xbox One
- Search for Xbox Game Pass in the store
- Pick the 14-day trial option, or buy a month's subscription
- Go to Settings > System > Language & Location
- Change the location to New Zealand, and the language to English New Zealand
- Restart your Xbox, you should now have access to the New Zealand store
- Download and play Sea of Thieves
This will only change the console's store, not your account's region. You can easily switch back when Sea of Thieves officially launches in your region.