If you ever doubted the “console wars” were over, here’s a new piece of data to consider: Helldivers 2, formerly console exclusive to Sony’s PS5, is currently the best-selling title on Xbox. In fact, it’s the first and third best-selling game, if you count its more premium edition, and it’s currently the ninth-most played game on the platform — mostly beaten by free-to-play games like Fortnite and Roblox but also Minecraft and GTA V.
It doesn’t surprise me that Helldivers 2 is popular on Xbox, because it was a huge hit on PS5 and PC. Last May, Sony revealed that Helldivers 2 had become PlayStation’s fastest-selling game of all time with 12 million copies sold in 12 weeks, and it may have now crossed 18 million after reportedly racking up nearly a million on Xbox in its first week on sale.
No, what’s surprising is that we now live in an era where companies like Sony and Microsoft no longer entirely see their hit games as a way to get players to buy their own consoles, and instead just want to sell as many copies of these games as they can. Back in May, we wrote about how the top three games on PlayStation came from Microsoft, and now it’s reciprocal!
Sony has come around to this position slowly, but by 2022, it planned for roughly half of its games to come out on PC or mobile instead of just console, and though PlayStation game boss Hermen Hulst suggested in 2024 that some of Sony’s big single-player games might be held in reserve, the company revealed this August that it’s gradually “moving away from a hardware centric business model.” It’s about selling games, not consoles.
Here’s where some of you will no doubt point out: is Helldivers 2 actually a PlayStation game? Since PlayStation is merely the publisher and doesn’t own its developer Arrowhead Game Studios, is it really such a big deal?
I would say yes, because Sony has been the one in control, the one making the strategic decisions over when and where and how much PlayStation goodness to share. When players balked at how Helldivers 2 originally required you to log in with a PlayStation account on PC, it was out of Arrowhead’s hands. When players wanted an Xbox version, Arrowhead said it was entirely up to Sony.
Microsoft doesn’t have to cut such publishing deals to bring Xbox’s biggest games to PlayStation, though. When it chose to bring Indiana Jones and Hellblade 2 to PS5, it could do so because it owns both giant publisher / developer Bethesda and developer Ninja Theory itself.
What is an Xbox, and what is a PlayStation, if not the place to play specific games? Is it a launcher and a set of familiar controls? Is it a feeling? That’s the challenge facing Microsoft and Sony if they continue down this road.
from The Verge https://ift.tt/J0Ihkou
