Sony Interactive Entertainment and Arrowhead Game Studios’ third-person shooter, HELLDIVERS 2 has passed the all-time peak concurrent player count of Xbox Game Studios and 343 Industries’ first-person shooter, Halo Infinite, on Steam.
According to the Steam charts (as per SteamDB), HELLDIVERS 2 has passed the all-time peak concurrent player count of Halo Infinite on Steam. The latter is Xbox Game Studios’ most successful live service title on the platform, and, with HELLDIVERS 2, Sony Interactive Entertainment has achieved greater success, based on the all-time peak concurrent player count stats.
Arrowhead Game Studios’ latest third-person shooter also benefits from being Sony Interactive Entertainment’s first title to launch day and date with the console version. Positive word of mouth and crossplay support with the PS5 version helped the game build momentum. All of this is also true for Halo Infinite, though the game didn’t quite gain the traction on Steam that was expected of it, both on PC and Xbox consoles. It was previously reported that more people have been playing Call of Duty games from over a decade ago on Xbox those playing Halo Infinite and Battlefield 2042 combined. The boost in player base for these decade or so old games was apparently the result of Activision fixing their matchmaking and servers on Xbox.
HELLDIVERS 2 serves as a sequel to the 2015 top-down shooter Helldivers. It was released for PlayStation 5 and Windows platforms on February 8, 2024. The game quickly sold around 1 million units within three days of its release. As opposed to its isometric predecessor, HELLDIVERS 2 is played from the third-person perspective. Players retain the ability to select Strategems, which are air drops featuring cluster bombs, sentry guns, shield generators, or supply pods containing limited-use special weaponry. Friendly fire remains a constant factor. The game’s armor system draws inspiration from real firearms against armored targets. Multiplayer mode supports up to four players and offers cross-play functionality between PlayStation 5 and Windows users. During the initial days following its release, human observers at the studio influenced gameplay in real time.
