Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
Arrowhead Game Studios has finally revealed who brought Helldivers 2 to Xbox.
Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani shared this statement on Discord:
It was all PlayStation. Send them your thanks! We were all in support of course.
I think it’s one of the coolest things they’ve done. They’re killing it.
Why Is This Such A Big Deal?
If you’re reading this, you probably don’t need an explanation. But you may not know Helldivers 2 Xbox rumors persisted for months.
A live service co-op game like Helldivers 2 benefits from having as many players as possible. Because of this it’s better for Arrowhead and the game if it was released on as many platforms as possible.
At the same time, a lot of people believed it would never happen. Sony said that they still believed in exclusive games, particularly to sell their PlayStation consoles. They have been bringing their games to PC for five years now. But other consoles were the line they wouldn’t cross, especially Xbox.
Arrowhead Told Us What Had To Happen
Last October 2024, Arrowhead’s community manager said it would be up to Sony and Microsoft if it could come to Xbox. They did not dismiss the idea at all. This seemingly impossible issue was what was in the way.
There were signs that this was more possible than it was impossible as well. Microsoft decided to keep publishing Minecraft in multiple platforms after acquiring it and Mojang. Sony also started publishing MLB: The Show to PC, Xbox and Switch. However, their licensee may have pushed them to do this to satisfy their desire to broaden the reach of the MLB brand.
In the past two years, Microsoft slowly shifted their business to bring their games to PlayStation 5. A lot of fanboys decided this meant that Microsoft ‘gave up’ on their console business. Some even thought that Sony would become a monopoly soon.
This Isn’t Really A Surprise
As we later found out, Sony would be following Microsoft’s lead and become a third party publisher themselves. But the truth is nothing about this move is surprising at all.
Sony had to choose to bring Helldivers 2 to Xbox. While Arrowhead Game Studios developed the game, Sony has the rights to it as the publisher.
At the same time, Sony could not afford to block Helldivers 2 from Xbox. Some fans argue that Xbox has a smaller user base than PlayStation. But from Sony’s perspective, everyone who wanted to buy Helldivers 2 on PlayStation and PC already bought it.
In spite of that, someone at Sony could have definitely been stubborn enough to still stop it from happening. It’s to the benefit of Arrowhead and the Helldivers 2 community that they turned it around.
