We have a somewhat deflating update to a wild but exciting rumor from earlier this year.
In the latest episode of of the XboxEra podcast, Shpeshal Nick Baker said this:
“So, remember how back in like March or April I had said that there was very very early discussions about Helldivers 2 potentially coming to Xbox? Yeah. Last I heard, that ain’t happening now.”
Nick and his co-hosts then went on to discuss what they believe happened. Nick did not hear this from his source, but his speculation is that Sony may have told Microsoft that they needed to pay for the development of the Helldivers 2 port to Xbox, and Microsoft turned it down.
We reported this rumor when Nick shared it in an earlier episode of their podcast, all the way back in April. Because they were under transitional CEO Hiroki Totoki, the XboxEra hosts speculated that it was just credible enough that he would be considering it.
Most recently, Arrowhead Game Studios’ community manager pointed out that you should never say never, and it was up to Sony and Microsoft to figure it out. That did signal that Arrowhead Game Studios was open to the idea, but with this update, any hopes for this happening have been squashed.
And we imagine some gamers will welcome this news, and some will not, but the two opposing sides are likely not the ones you think they are. Because what we found is that Xbox gamers are only mildly interested in Helldivers 2 coming to their platforms.
It is actually the Helldivers 2 community itself, those who are existing players, who were most hopeful that their favorite co-op title would come to Xbox. And we imagine, if it is possible that the game could come to a Nintendo platform, they would want that too.
Because by virtue of its game design, Helldivers 2 benefits from having as many players as possible. If battle royale games like Fortnite accidentally found their ways into becoming a platform for a community, that developer Epic likens to a metaverse, Helldivers 2 is intended to be a community builder. Its meta marketing is humorously and literally a recruitment drive at the same time.
But if this is the die Arrowhead Game Studios and Helldivers 2 players are stuck with, then they will just have to come up with something else. Live service is both one of the most lucrative and challenging game genres to sustain, and the game and its community could have really used this to help guarantee its future.
Still, we hope that Helldivers 2 finds that path to long-term success.
