Helldivers 2 Is a "Huge Success" While Destiny 2 Falls Short - Sony's Expectations of Bungie Don't Magically Equate to Revenue (Eurogamer)

Gaming
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In the most recent financial report to investors for Q2 FY2025, Sony gave a surprisingly transparent look at the state of its gaming business. Xbox was even mentioned by name, which is still a rarity in these updates. Sony’s full-year guidance remains steady despite several headwinds. Sales are now forecast to rise 3% to around $29.8 billion, driven “primarily due to the impact of foreign exchange rates”.

Live-service titles continue to play a major role in this, with “more than 40 percent of our first-party software revenue” now coming from recurring live-service games. Against that backdrop, Sony contrasted two of its biggest ongoing live-service bets. Helldivers 2 has surged after launching on Xbox, while Destiny 2 continues to fall short of expectations and contributed to a major impairment at Bungie.

Helldivers 2 released on Xbox on August 26, 2025, and early estimates showed just how strong that launch was. A report suggested it sold more than 900,000 units in its first six days on the platform. For comparison, its original PlayStation launch was estimated at around 633,000 units in the same six-day window.

The momentum continued well beyond week one. Helldivers 2 charted in the Xbox most-played charts throughout September and October, which showed that interest did not slow down after the initial burst. It became clear that the game had found a large new audience on Xbox and that the cross-platform move was paying off.

Sony confirmed this in its Q2 FY2025 report. It said:

Helldiver 2, which was also released for Xbox in August of this year, is doing extremely well, not only attracting new users on Xbox, but also seeing increased engagement from existing users on PS5 and PC. This resulted in a significant increase in sales of the title year-on-year.

Sony Q2 FY2025

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Mentioned in the other thread but my hope would be that PlayStation realizes that sharing their games with other consoles doesn’t diminish the PlayStation brand. It would be super cool to see ports of like Horizon Zero Dawn or Ghost of Tsushima to Xbox.

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I couldn’t be happier for Arrowhead. My opinion on Helldivers 2 has only improved since my initial review of the PC version, and this will only cement the fact that the ship of the old ways have sailed… the media is gonna have to do a bit of mental gymnastics to recover from the incoming whiplash when Sony follows Xbox’s lead and open the floodgates, as they have in almost every regard over the last decade (and often failed, despite the media’s glazing; lest we forget the 12 cancelled GaaS games..)

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Crashes are still a thing. I played 2 times recently and the game just crashed both times. I couldn’t even finish a mission… Game is good, but I’m waiting for those long overdue fixes.

A report suggested it sold more than 900,000 units in its first six days on the platform. For comparison, its original PlayStation launch was estimated at around 633,000 units in the same six-day window.

And yet, it’s insane how it sold more on Xbox on launch than PS5 in the same time frame. Wow!

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They’re going to, pretty soon. Steam is about to hurt them with a new machine with Xbox already having a similar approach while software is backing them up.