After rumors from throughout the year, Arrowhead Game Studios has shared an official statement on the chances of Helldivers 2 coming to Xbox.
As reported by VideoGamer, Arrowhead Community Manager Twinbeard, AKA Thomas Petersson, shared this statement when asked about it on the Helldivers 2 Discord:
“Who says it couldn’t? It’s not up to us but to Sony and Phil to duke out, but hypothetically speaking, if both partners think it would benefit them from a financial/brand standpoint, it could. If Sony believes it won’t though, it won’t.”
Launched in February 8 of this year simultaneously on PlayStation 5 and Steam, Helldivers 2 stands as the first big hit from Sony’s initiative for live service games. It stands in contrast to the recent release of Firewalk Studios’ Concord, and the recently acquired Bungie and their recent struggles with Destiny 2.
While Sony published Helldivers 2 and they own the franchise, this is a second party title, as they don’t own Arrowhead Game Studios. This distinction is more than a mere formality, as Arrowhead was able to launch the game without the PSN requirement that Sony wanted from the start.
And it can be argued that that lack of a PSN account is part of the reason Helldivers 2 is far more successful than Concord. In the fallout of the controversy of Sony bringing back PSN, Sony chose to drop the requirement. Of course, as we have repeatedly pointed out, the game was still delisted in all the countries and regions that don’t have PSN.
And all of this has led to Helldivers 2 struggling to bring back their original player base. We don’t publicly know how many of those Helldivers 2 Steam players that left were forcibly removed by Sony, but it has left the game in an unfavorable situation overall.
And this is what partly fuels the rumors of Helldivers 2 coming to Xbox. The original rumor actually came from Shpeshal Nick Baker last April. This dear writer then hastily presumed that Helldivers 2 was the game being teased to be the big AAA game that was coming to Game Pass last July, based on a rumor from YouTuber Mr. Boomstick XL.
As it turned out, the big addition to Game Pass last July was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. But while we were completely off the mark on the rumor, we did notice that a lot of Helldivers 2 players were very receptive to the idea.
As we pointed out, Microsoft brought Xbox accounts to more regions than Sony has with PSN. Furthermore, Microsoft’s distribution network expands to the Xbox consoles, the Microsoft Store, and Game Pass.
While these are smaller distribution networks than PlayStation 5, and especially Steam, the Helldivers 2 community sees that getting more players will help rather than hurt them. Of course, that’s partly because of the nature of Helldivers 2 itself: a large scale co-op multiplayer title.
If Nick’s source was accurate, then Sony and Microsoft have already been talking about it since the start of this year. Console gamers may be indifferent, and some of them may even be hostile to the idea. But this time, those armchair analysts may find that they are being overruled by the people who play the games themselves.
Because Xbox needs to taste that freedom too.
