Sony’s multiformat plans are already proving profitable, as former PS5 exclusive Helldivers 2 becomes an instant hit on Xbox.
Although we’ve yet to reach the point where Sony is porting its biggest PlayStation exclusives to other consoles, the company has certainly become more open to the idea of multiplatform releases, beyond just PC.
Aside from the fact that a recent PlayStation job ad explicitly mentions releasing ‘PlayStation Studios software titles’ on Xbox and Nintendo Switch, we’ve already examples such as Lego Horizon Adventures and, most recently, Helldivers 2.
Judging by how popular Helldivers 2 is proving on Xbox, this is likely to only further incentivise Sony into porting more of its PlayStation 5 games onto Microsoft’s platforms.
While no official sales figures have been shared, Alinea analyst Rhys Elliott claims that Helldivers 2 has sold at least 926,000 copies on Xbox, in its first six days.
According to Alinea, that’s even more than the PlayStation 5 version managed in its first six days – at 633,000 units – although the Xbox version benefitted from the game being out long enough to generate a strong reputation right from the start,.
This also makes Helldivers 2 the top selling Xbox game at the moment. If you check the Xbox store and its top paid games list, the standard and Super Citizen editions of the game are in the number one and number three spots, respectively, with NBA 2K26’s Superstar Edition sandwiched in-between.
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It’s certainly a greater multiplatform success than Lego Horizon Adventures or Patapon 1+2, but that’s hardly a surprise given the game is a live service title.
None of those games, or this week’s Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots are being released on Xbox though, so there’s a good chance Sony’s multiformat policy will only extend to live service titles.
That means Concord probably would’ve been released on Xbox, if it hadn’t been an enormous flop, with Marathon already scheduled for Xbox Series X/S – if it’s ever released.
Sony has been far more involved with Helldivers 2’s Xbox port, with the CEO of developer Arrowhead Studios, Shams Jorjani, telling fans on Discord (via Windows Central) that they should send their thanks to Sony since the port was ‘all PlayStation.’
Even if Sony’s unwilling to bring even its lesser known IPs like Patapon to Xbox, perhaps the company will begin porting games it at least helped fund as PlayStation 5 exclusives, such as Stellar Blade or Lost Soul Aside.
Conversely, Microsoft has been vindicated by its more open approach to multiplatform releases, with it becoming the top publisher on both the Xbox and PlayStation stores thanks to the success of ports like Sea Of Thieves (which reportedly sold a million copies in its first four months) and Indiana Jones And The Great Circle (which reportedly sold faster on PlayStation 5 than it did on Xbox).
That said, these ports don’t appear to be guaranteed hits. The recent release of Gears Of War: Reloaded has proved rather tepid on PlayStation 5, with Elliott reporting that of its 1.3 million downloads in August, 78.9% of them came from Xbox owners.
By comparison, Elliott says the remaster of a remaster has only sold 259,000 PlayStation 5 copies, trailing behind Forza Horizon 5’s PlayStation 5 port, which sold 1.5 million copies in less than a week.
This can probably be attributed either to PlayStation owners not being as interested in a much older Xbox game (the original Gears Of War is nearly 20 years old) or a disinterest in the Gears Of War brand altogether.
We suspect, Halo will fare much better though once it inevitably makes the jump.
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