The year 2024 has turned out to be good for Arrowhead Game Studios with the launch of Helldivers 2. The sequel to the 2015 game has proven to be a massive hit, sharing the limelight with titles like Palworld. The game was released on the PlayStation and PC, and since then players are rushing in to go on the interstellar war.
Xbox players were however missing out on the fun, as the game skipped the platform due to it being a Sony Interactive IP. As the game is getting popular day by day, some passionate Xbox users started an online petition to bring the game to the platform which is gradually gaining traction as the days go by.
The former Sony head wants an Xbox port for Helldivers 2
It looks that bringing the game to Xbox is now gaining some significant momentum. The latest person to talk about this is Shawn Layden the former President and CEO of Sony Interactive America.
During an interview with VentureBeat, the former President and CEO spoke about console exclusivity and added that if a game’s development cost exceeds more than $200 million then, “exclusivity is your Achilles’ heel.”
He said further than that keeping a game of this cost exclusive to particular consoles, significantly reduces the addressable market.
Layden further cited the success of Helldivers 2 and shared his opinion that the game should come to the Xbox platform. This is because in the category of free-to-play or live service games, launching it to another platform is the way of opening the funnel to get more people to play the game. He added,
In a free-to-play world, as we know, 95% of those people will never spend a nickel.
According to him, keeping in mind the development costs, Sony launched the game simultaneously on PC, and now it is time again to widen the funnel and get more players in by taking it to other consoles.
This step seems logical today, as the cost of developing some of these cutting-edge games has ballooned in the past few years.
Rise in the development costs of games at Sony
Recently, Hiroki Totoki who currently heads Sony, spoke about the PlayStation business and added that the studios should work towards cutting the development costs of their games.
Sony has for some time seen a significant rise in the development costs of its games. This was thrown to light during the 2023 data hack at Sony-owned Insomniac. Based on the leaked documents from Insomniac, the development costs of Spider-Man 2 went over budget by $30 million costing $300 million as reported by Kotaku. Furthermore, the game had to sell 7.2 million units to meet this cost.
According to a recent sales report, Insomniac has now managed to reach the break-even number although an official confirmation from Sony is yet to come.
It therefore now remains to be seen if Helldivers 2 makes its way to the Xbox console, as many things point towards the fact that it should.
