Sony has been toying with different ways to expand its gaming reach past the PlayStation itself, and while that does not involve handing off exclusives to Microsoft or Nintendo, it has included PC.
Now, the experiment has evolved. Helldivers 2, one of Sony’s new live service games in its quest to expand that part of its lineup, has launched on PC and PS5 simultaneously. While far, far away from being a top PlayStation franchise, the concept of the day one launch on PC has allowed it to surpass even God of War as Sony’s all-time best PC launch.
On day one, a weekday at that, Helldivers 2 hit 81,840 peak players, which breaks God of War’s previous best of 73,528 two years ago when it launched on Steam. Again, the difference here is that this was well after God of War launched on PlayStation, opening the game up more broadly, while Helldivers 2 is launching on both at once, but still, it’s impressive.
These numbers are also despite the game having something of a rocky launch thanks to server issues preventing many players from logging on, or getting booted during games. This has resulted in a 68% positive score on Steam, where it probably would have been higher if not for those problems. The game itself, however, is getting a lot of praise for being fun, allowing for multiplayer antics with its friendly fire and other shenanigans.
So, it’s a win both for Sony expanding to PC launches, and a win for their live service ambitions after a number of setbacks. Granted, it’s day one and we don’t know how much longevity the game will have, but for what this game is, I think this is about as good as a start as Sony could have asked for, minus the technical problems which are unfortunately sort of par for the course for live launches right now. It’s also the #1 seller on Steam right now at its price of $40, so that’s really panning out well on top of the player peaks themselves.
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As for what this changes about Sony’s future release philosophy, we don’t yet know. I don’t believe we are at the point yet of Sony doing simultaneous PC/PS5 launches for its larger franchises, especially its single player games, though I do expect the time gap between PS5 and PC launch to keep narrowing, as we’ve already seen. While Microsoft has its very public struggles with the Xbox brand as of late from Game Pass adoption to exclusive production, Sony’s biggest issue is pushing past one-off single player games for more ongoing revenue and expanding outside the PlayStation box, which limits their sales cap on games. Now, they may have started to lean more heavily into a PC-based solution.
