Shams Jorjani, CEO at Arrowhead Studios, didn’t expect to bring Helldivers 2 over to Xbox, confessing recently that he and the studio were pretty surprised at having gotten the “green light” from PlayStation, the game’s publisher, to appear on the rival platform.
Appearing on Christopher Dring’s podcast The Game Business Show, Jorjani admits, “I’m super happy PlayStation wanted to do it. Ultimately it was their strategy, we’re just along for the ride, but we’re so excited to be a part of it. And it’s always fun to be a part of gaming history.”
According to Jorjani, the move just made sense given Helldivers 2’s multiplayer trappings and presence on more than one system at launch, considering it released on both PS5 and PC at its initial launch in 2024. It helps that the Xbox launch, which appears to have done well according to Jorjani and PlayStation, coincided with a Halo-themed content drop with callbacks to the fan-favorite title Halo 3: ODST. “It turns out if you give the players what they want, they’ll be happy,” says Jorjani.
Lol, at least one person in the industry gets it.
I love that this dispels any notion that Arrowhead put pressure on Sony and shows that games can sell well on Xbox.
I imagine the finance team at Sony has been running more projections this year than ever before about multi-platform releases. At the end of the day the finance team is going to win any arguments.
Checkmate fanboys, and you’re absolutely right @Sydle. I said the same exact thing the moment Sony’s finance department starting seeing the returns when The Show hit Xbox, or they started being part and parcel to Bungie’s revenue (at least, before Destiny 2 crashed as those of us who suffered through that game’s first few years knew was already happening at the time of purchase).
Anyone that thinks Sony isn’t going to be accelerating their “follow Xbox” strategy by putting more games on other platforms is being willfully blind, obtuse, and frankly just exhibiting cult-like psychosis. Lest we forget Sony’s dismal PS numbers from their financial report the other day, which was only buffered by Helldivers 2’s release on Xbox, GaaS, and other platforms, or the fact that the media/idiots condemned Xbox for years for less restrictive moves but Sony literally just announced a Horizon MMO and one of the only places you can’t play it is on Playstation. Again, I shouldn’t have to reiterate any of the aforementioned facts, but we are in the most stupid of timelines unfortunately.
Agreed. And let’s not forget the slide from the Insomniac hack where they explicitly said their distribution model was behind that of Xbox.