Sony PlayStation's Helldivers 2 Tops the Charts on Xbox

The “console wars” may finally be over. Case in point: Helldivers 2, a game published by Sony for PlayStation, is currently the best-selling title on Xbox. Not only that, but its premium edition is also sitting at number three. The game is even cracking the top 10 most-played list on Xbox, landing at ninth place behind juggernauts like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and GTA V.

Helldivers 2’s success on Xbox isn’t exactly shocking. It was already a massive hit on PlayStation 5 and PC. Last May, Sony revealed the game had become PlayStation’s fastest-selling title ever, moving 12 million copies in just 12 weeks. Reports suggest sales have now crossed 18 million worldwide, with nearly a million copies sold on Xbox in its first week alone.

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What is surprising is how normal this cross-console success story has become. Just a few months ago, the top three games on PlayStation all came from Microsoft. Now, Sony’s biggest hit is dominating on Xbox. The message is clear: for both companies, the business is less about selling hardware and more about selling games everywhere they can.

Sony has inched toward this approach over the past few years. By 2022, it was already planning for roughly half of its releases to land on PC or mobile in addition to consoles. And in August, the company made it official, revealing it was “moving away from a hardware-centric business model.” Still, PlayStation Studios chief Hermen Hulst has suggested that some blockbuster single-player games might remain PlayStation-only for a while.

There’s also the question of whether Helldivers 2 truly counts as a “PlayStation game.” Sony doesn’t own developer Arrowhead Game Studios, but it has made all the big publishing decisions — from when to release the game, to pricing, to the controversial requirement for PlayStation account logins on PC. Even Arrowhead admitted that an Xbox version was up to Sony.

Microsoft’s strategy is a little different. Because it outright owns Bethesda and Ninja Theory, it can independently bring big games like Indiana Jones and Hellblade 2 to PlayStation without striking publishing deals.

So, what even defines an “Xbox game” or a “PlayStation game” anymore? Is it where the game launches first? The publisher behind it? Or just the logo stamped on the box? As Sony and Microsoft lean further into publishing beyond their own ecosystems, the old idea of consoles as exclusive playgrounds is fading fast.

One thing is for sure: right now, the best-selling Xbox game is a PlayStation-published one. And that would’ve been unthinkable just a few years ago.

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