Helldivers 2 is a juggernaut (Picture: Sony)
Sony’s decision to launch Helldivers 2 across PlayStation 5 and PC has been a huge success, as it now ranks among the highest grossing Sony games ever.
If Helldivers 2’s success wasn’t clear enough, after topping the charts for two consecutive months in the UK, sales data in the US has sealed it as a Sony giant.
In data published by Circana, Helldivers 2 ranks as the best-selling premium game of the year so far, based on dollar sales across physical and digital, ahead of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Dragon’s Dogma 2.
The majority of this success has come from the PC market rather than the PlayStation 5, with the co-op shooter topping the charts for the most played Steam titles based on monthly active users in March.
Industry analyst Mat Piscatella highlighted how successful it has been on PC, following its launch on February 8.
‘PC has been a huge part of the success of Helldivers 2 in the US,’ he wrote on Twitter. ‘With PC, Helldivers 2 is already the seventh highest grossing Sony published game in history. Without PC it wouldn’t currently rank among the top 20.’
The success of Helldivers 2 will likely lead Sony to launch more exclusives simultaneously across PlayStation and PC in the future – something the company has already talked about, as it looks to improve the company’s profit margins.
Elsewhere in the data, Dragon’s Dogma 2 topped the chart of the best-selling premium games in March 2024, followed by Helldivers 2 and MLB: The Show 24. Rise Of The Ronin, Princess Peach: Showtime, and Unicorn Overlord also all made the top ten for the month at numbers five, six, and eight, respectively.
‘With just one month in market, Dragon’s Dogma 2 has already surpassed the life-to-date tracked dollar sales of Dragon’s Dogma and Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen combined,’ Piscatella added.
While early reports suggested Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth had underperformed against Square Enix’s sales expectations, it hasn’t done badly in the US. The sequel is the fourth best-selling game of the year so far, but it has dropped by five spots from second to seventh between February and March.
On the hardware side, March sales overall were down 32% compared to a year earlier, with PlayStation 5, Switch, and Xbox Series X/S spending declining by a minimum of 30% year-on-year. Overall hardware sales in the first quarter were down 24% compared to the same period in 2023.
The PlayStation 5 continued to be the best-selling console in the US during both March and the first quarter of the year, with the Nintendo Switch in second when it comes to unit sales across the same two periods. Microsoft’s Xbox Series X/S, while third in unit sales, ranked second in dollar sales – because it’s more expensive.
That is a massive drop though and underlines why there are already whispers of next gen console plans, for both Xbox and PlayStation. Microsoft is supposedly targeting a 2026 launch for a new system and it’s not hard to see why when the Xbox Series X/S continues to get beaten by the now seven-year-old Switch.
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Console sales look set to continue to decline over the coming year, with no ‘major’ PlayStation games expected before April 2025. Sony is expected to launch a PS5 Pro console this year, and Microsoft a redesigned Xbox Series X, but these are unlikely to reverse the trend, only slow it down.
The positive news for Sony is how successful Helldivers 2 has been, especially as it was made on a modest AA budget. As such, expect more live service games and cross-platform launches in the company’s future.
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