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[Imtjnotu]

Has the big new update gone live yet?

Since this morning.

According to him they aren't worried because after the improvements and fixes made when they struggled with servers during the launch period, it's ready to have more than 750K CCU, more than they had now.


Yep, it's super fun. If you find it frustrating feel free to move the difficulty level down, it's still fun. Depending on the level some top enemy type won't appear and the rewards will be a bit smaller, but still fun (and will be easier to collect the other rewards, some high level users do it frequently to farm some resources).


With Zelda BotW being so big and a movie coming, will Nintendo port it to other formats?

There are dozens/hundreds of millions of players used to play onen world games in PC and the other consoles.


It's a very common investor strategy in many segments, and in gaming too.

Inverstors or publishers often invest in batches of like 20 product/services that after some strict review look pretty promising or have potential, knowing a few of them won't end being released, that other ones will tank and some of them will do well, and then hopefully one or two would be big hits.

The profits of the successful ones normally more than cover the unsuccessful ones. In this case of the 12 Sony IPs with a GaaS title initiative, they already have in the market 6 of the 12 planned ones and 4 of them are very successful. Pretty likely the whole initiative is already profitable.

I leave it on level 10. I'll never go lower. I haven't played anything less than super hell dive since July of last year

 

[mckmas8808]

Go to the main terminal where you select your planets. Back all the way out to where it shows all the sectors. Top left shows current diver count

That's kinda dope that they allow players to see that.

I think Sony is probably done greenlighting 200mil+ gaas games, unless it is Destiny 3. Helldivers 2 is a great example of Sony investing 20mil in a AA studio to create something innovative. Halfway through development Arrowhead showed Sony a vertical slice of HD2 and Sony decided to double Arrowheads funding. Low risk/high reward

I wish Sony would just continually invest in AA studios. Even if they don't end up buying the studio, it still fills gaps in their portfolio. Arrowhead and Housemarque are the best investments they have made this generation. Absolute homeruns

Hold on..................There's no way HD2 cost them $20m-$40 million to make.

Yesterday Helldivers 2 had 164.6K CCU in Steam, the biggerst Steam CCU peak since April 28, 2024, around 2 months and a half after releasing the game.


Yes, but 4 of the 6 released made it: MLB The Show, Gran Turismo, Helldivers 2 and Destiny are very successful.

As an example week or two ago the Destiny 2 upcoming expansions were top 1 in preorders in basicall all non-Asian PSN stores.

They started to make way more a dozen because they knew many wouldn't be greenlighted, and among the greenlighted some wouldn't make the cut and would end releasing a dozen. And out of this dozen, knew a few would tank and some will do just ok. Maybe with just one or two very successful, with the profits they'd pay the costs of the rest, and they have successful 4 so far, with 6 more to be released.


Helldivers 2 started with a smaller scope, but still was mentioned in their job offer descriptions a AAA PS5 since the start. Originally was going to take 3 years, but took 8 instead. Make sure its budget never was 20M. If something, should be closer to like 150-200M.

If Sony can relax with the Quantity of GAAS Games and focus on making Quality, then they'll be okay. NO MORE CHASING!!!

 

[BlackTron]

That is really impressive

With the game being so big and a movie coming, will Sony port this to other formats?

Xbox is a dying platform and not really a competitor anymore.. still there are 30mil Xbox users that are used to playing shooters

I kind of doubt Helldivers could run on Switch 2 - The game is basically CPU bound on PS5 now

It doesn't really seem necessary to port to other formats, they have PC and PS5.

My mobile Ampere laptop runs the game just fine, Switch 2 is a custom mobile Ampere. But I don't really think they need to. It's not Lego Horizon

 

[yurinka]

I guarantee you Sony did not hand Arrowhead a 100mil dollar check, let alone 200mil, after Helldivers 1 released in 2015. At that time, Arrowhead consisted of 15 employees. They did not go into full production until 2021. At launch, they barely had over 100 employees

No. It did go into full production in 2016, its development took 8 years until launch and its game credits has over 1200 people. Even if not of the biggest ones, it's a Sony AAA game. Of course it did cost way over $100M.

P.S.: In AAA games the lead game studio is only around 10% of the people who works in a project.

but I doubt Sony counts Gran Turismo and MLB as part of their gaas investment.

When their GaaS investment was announced, MLB was its image I assume because being a sports games and a successful one was an easy bet. Plus was going to be the first one.

Gran Turismo was the most successful Sony IP with GaaS when the initiative was announced, the initiative was to have a dozen Sony IPs with GaaS getting released before April 2026 (later this deadline was removed because a few of them were going to be released after it) and Gran Turismo 7, a GaaS, was released in that period. So obviously is part of that investment.

The PlayStation brand has been synonymous with high quality for a long time now. Concord did irreparable damage that money can't fix. This generation as a whole has been very mediocre for Sony, even though they are making more money than ever

Sony released a lot of low quality first party game turds and utter failures every generation since PS1, but maybe you never heard about many of them. I'd say this generation is the one where they released less turds, and the one where their fist party games are making more money than ever, broke first party sales records with new releases in 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024, their first party games won a ton of GOTY awards these years and had many games nominated.

Other than that, SIE as a whole and their console in particular is also making mor money than ever. And they have a bigger userbase than ever with record engagement number. I don't see where the supposed damage is.

 

[Super Lemon Drop]

I really wish that I had friends who played Helldivers 2...

Get weird and kill some bugs, ya know?

 

[Negotiator101]

What people don't realize is that Sony only needed 1 of their GaaS projects to make it big, that would be enough to fund all of the failures. The shotgun approach to games development

Sony does need to cancel Fairgame$ and Marathon though, both of those will flop if released so they can save the development costs of paying all these devs to make Concord 2 and 3

But don't mistake the failures of Sony's other GaaS games for some kind of overall failure. One game made it. That's enough to keep them going for years

Concord alone lost Sony more than this has made so far, stop writing rubbish please.

 

[GHG]

Concord alone lost Sony more than this has made so far, stop writing rubbish please.

The game has sold over 15 million copies.

That alone means revenue surpasses even the upper estimates for Concord's budget.

 

[The Pleasure]

The game is fun and funny as fuck is why. Dropping a nuke and posing while your buddy is getting destroyed and halfway in tears is peak gaming.

That's you?

 

[Portugeezer]

Have they improved the framerate since last year? I played for about 2 months after launch.

 

[Three]

Insert engagement jokes here.

Engagement is good now.

Aww diddums

Nobody is saying WAU/MAU player stats are a bad thing to have but helldivers 2 sales aren't being hidden and using engagement to make unpopular games seem more succesful than they are. Helldivers 2 sold 12M copies in <3 months. now how many copies did those "4M players" after x months on a sub sell? They're "free" on a sub too and still have fewer players. Nobody is hiding Helldivers 2's success just as they wouldn't be if we got some CoD or Fortnite player stats.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

Insert engagement jokes here.

The game sold millions In addition to. It's not remotely the same but keep up the good fight. Phil sees you.

 

[coachmcguirk91]

No. It did go into full production in 2016, its development took 8 years until launch and its game credits has over 1200 people. Even if not of the biggest ones, it's a Sony AAA game. Of course it did cost way over $100M.

P.S.: In AAA games the lead game studio is only around 10% of the people who works in a project.

1200 People, oh my god! Just goes to show you don't understand how game development works. Credits include people who worked on the game for 1hr and people who worked full time. It is not a good gauge to measure development costs

Ghost of Tsushima, which had a much longer full production timeline, was estimated to cost around 60mil. It had 1800 credits to their name. Spider-Man 2018 has over 2000 credited people and it cost roughly 80mil. You don't know what you are talking about

And that is before even talking about the saved costs of producing the game in Sweden compared to US

 

[scydrex]

According to diffusionx this game haven't had good success and they haven't done a good job keeping the count.

 

[Negotiator101]

The game has sold over 15 million copies.

That alone means revenue surpasses even the upper estimates for Concord's budget.

Wrong, estimated net revenue is 399 million, estimated cost of Concord is 400 million and that's just 1 title add in all the other failures and it's brown trousers time at Sony HQ.

 

[coachmcguirk91]

Wrong, estimated net revenue is 399 million, estimated cost of Concord is 400 million and that's just 1 title add in all the other failures and it's brown trousers time at Sony HQ.

Have you never heard of Microtransactions? Ya know, how all these gaas games make the majority of their money?

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

That's you?

All DAY!

 

[Paasei]

That's good. Sony should just focus on this game and scrap all the other projects GaaS related. At least people want to actually play this game.

Not me, though. But they don't have to make one for me either.

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

The game had its biggest peak since like one or 2 months after release. That's great!

 

[GHG]

Wrong, estimated net revenue is 399 million, estimated cost of Concord is 400 million and that's just 1 title add in all the other failures and it's brown trousers time at Sony HQ.

 

[Evil Calvin]

Would have 3-4 million if they...you know....put it on Xbox.

 

[BlackTron]

Would have 3-4 million if they...you know....put it on Xbox.

It seems to be pulling double weight as both a healthy GAAS game and console exclusive.

But not to worry, Xbox will be a PC soon

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Wrong, estimated net revenue is 399 million, estimated cost of Concord is 400 million and that's just 1 title add in all the other failures and it's brown trousers time at Sony HQ.

If it's accurate to say that Helldivers has sold at least 15 million copies, we can presume it's had an average sale price of 40 dollars. It's been sold at 32 dollars on occasion, but the supercitizen version was a big seller especially on steam.

So before we get into warbonds, that alone would put it at 600 million in revenue. So not sure where you're getting 399 million. You're clearly pushing an agenda to downplay Helldivers and then to push overinflated and debunked figures for Concord.

Warbonds in Helldivers 2 are 10 dollars, but you don't need to buy them and you can earn credits through the game. If we take 15 million players and presume that cumulatively 5% of them are buying half the available warbonds, that would mean

750k players, 6.5 warbonds @ 10 dollars a piece... you're looking at at least another 50 million dollars, and I think that's probably being conservative.

Then there's the fact that this 15 million figure is from November...

 

[poppabk]

Aww diddums

Nobody is saying WAU/MAU player stats are a bad thing to have but helldivers 2 sales aren't being hidden and using engagement to make unpopular games seem more succesful than they are. Helldivers 2 sold 12M copies in <3 months. now how many copies did those "4M players" after x months on a sub sell? They're "free" on a sub too and still have fewer players. Nobody is hiding Helldivers 2's success just as they wouldn't be if we got some CoD or Fortnite player stats.

Official sales numbers were released?

 

[Evil Calvin]

It seems to be pulling double weight as both a healthy GAAS game and console exclusive.

But not to worry, Xbox will be a PC soon

I have an Xbox (not a PC) and a PS5. But just common sense would say that if it were on XSX I would assume a couple million (of the 25 or so million who have a XSX/S) would help the studio and Sony. That would be about $80 million in extra profit.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I have an Xbox (not a PC and a PS5. But just common sense would say that if it were on XSX I would assume a couple million (of the 25 or so million who have a XSX/S) would help the studio and Sony. That would be about $80 million in extra profit.

First, you're forgetting about royalties. So no, that's not 80 million in profit.

2 million at 40 dollars is 80 million, minus 30% royalties and you're looking at 56 million dollars, minus the cost of porting the game to both Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X and remember this game isn't running on PS4, it'll require a lot of work to get it running on XSS. So I'd assume at least 5-10 million dollars to port it to Xbox. So you're looking at maybe as little as 46 million dollars in profit. Now, I'm not saying 46 million is nothing, but not sure that's worth the brand damage or the return on investment.

 

[BlackTron]

I have an Xbox (not a PC and a PS5. But just common sense would say that if it were on XSX I would assume a couple million (of the 25 or so million who have a XSX/S) would help the studio and Sony. That would be about $80 million in extra profit.

I mean...it's just getting into the same exclusives-or-not thing. What "helps" more, expanding the audience, or having an exclusive title.

It's not exactly common sense, it's a complex topic. Was it common sense to put Mario 64 on PSX to sell more copies? Yes being a GAAS game makes it "different", but it's also one not starving for players to find solvency. There's more to think about before handwaving it away as common sense, even though I feel your pain only owning an Xbox. Historically, this type of situation is exactly what would push you to buy the other console, and an example of why they might not do it.

 

[Negotiator101]

Have you never heard of Microtransactions? Ya know, how all these gaas games make the majority of their money?

That's total you ignoramus

If it's accurate to say that Helldivers has sold at least 15 million copies, we can presume it's had an average sale price of 40 dollars. It's been sold at 32 dollars on occasion, but the supercitizen version was a big seller especially on steam.

So before we get into warbonds, that alone would put it at 600 million in revenue. So not sure where you're getting 399 million. You're clearly pushing an agenda to downplay Helldivers and then to push overinflated and debunked figures for Concord.

Warbonds in Helldivers 2 are 10 dollars, but you don't need to buy them and you can earn credits through the game. If we take 15 million players and presume that cumulatively 5% of them are buying half the available warbonds, that would mean

750k players, 6.5 warbonds @ 10 dollars a piece... you're looking at at least another 50 million dollars, and I think that's probably being conservative.

Then there's the fact that this 15 million figure is from November...

That's some bullshit you wrote there what agenda? I'm talking about net revenue silly boy

The GaaS push by Sony has been disastrous, you can write it's and maybe's all day long but the facts are facts.

 

[DeepEnigma]

It's all they have left.

 

[Panajev2001a]

That's total you ignoramus

That's some bullshit you wrote there what agenda? I'm talking about net revenue silly boy

The GaaS push by Sony has been disastrous, you can write it's and maybe's all day long but the facts are facts.

To be fair you are not the one quoting facts or at least data… Mibu no ookami is…

 

[mckmas8808]

I have an Xbox (not a PC and a PS5. But just common sense would say that if it were on XSX I would assume a couple million (of the 25 or so million who have a XSX/S) would help the studio and Sony. That would be about $80 million in extra profit.

Oh snap! You were serious.

It'll be high level stupid to put this game on Xbox.

 

[Negotiator101]

To be fair you are not the one quoting facts or at least data… Mibu no ookami is…

No bud he's wrote opinion no hard data to back anything go read it again

 

[mckmas8808]

First, you're forgetting about royalties. So no, that's not 80 million in profit.

2 million at 40 dollars is 80 million, minus 30% royalties and you're looking at 56 million dollars, minus the cost of porting the game to both Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X and remember this game isn't running on PS4, it'll require a lot of work to get it running on XSS. So I'd assume at least 5-10 million dollars to port it to Xbox. So you're looking at maybe as little as 46 million dollars in profit. Now, I'm not saying 46 million is nothing, but not sure that's worth the brand damage or the return on investment.

And that's assuming it sells 2 million on Xbox LOL!

 

[yurinka]

show you don't understand how game development works.

You don't know what you are talking about

Next month is my 20th anniversary working in different areas of the game industry, as dev I worked in over 40 published games, including top mobile or AAA publisher. And obviously have many friends in a ton of top places (including Sony teams).

You're the one who has no idea what you are talking about, and of how it works. Not me.

P.S.: As a random example yesterday, as part of the jury I gave awards on their ceremony to the graduated teams of this year the -probably- most import gamedev university of my country.

Ghost of Tsushima, which had a much longer full production timeline, was estimated to cost around 60mil. It had 1800 credits to their name.

No, Ghost of Tsushima has 1697 people on its credits and its development started in 2014 and was under 6 years long.

And no, GoT didn't have a budget of under $60M. That's simply impossible and the source of that was a random annonimous -now deleted- Twitter account with zero credibility.

Spider-Man 2018 has over 2000 credited people and it cost roughly 80mil.

Spider-Man has 2002 people on its credits, its development took 4 years and its budget it's impossible that could have been 80M when its shorter spinoff with reused assets did cost 156M, its remaster $39M and its sequel $315M.

What did cost 81M was the way shorter, linear game Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart

And that is before even talking about the saved costs of producing the game in Sweden compared to US

In AAA games around 90% of the people who work on the game isn't from their lead development studio and are spread from all around NA, EU and Asia. And a huge percent of the game budget isn't from its development side, but from the marketing, PR and publishing sides.

And Sweden is a very expensive place to develop games, they have some of the highest salaries and taxes in Europe.

 

[Panajev2001a]

No bud he's wrote opinion no hard data to back anything go read it again

I read it, what do you expect a Sony signed notarised accounting doc? Do you have problems with the numbers he quoted?

 

[Lucifers Beard]

Does this include how many times a single player has logged in? Because due to crashes occuring on PC literally every 5 minutes (2-3 minutes if I'm really unlucky), then I'd probably be one of the largest contributors to that number lol.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Does this include how many times a single player has logged in? Because due to crashes occuring on PC literally every 5 minutes (2-3 minutes if I'm really unlucky), then I'd probably be one of the largest contributors to that number lol.

On your PC.

These are individual, same player isn't counted twice that week no matter how many times they log in and play the game.

 

[Three]

Official sales numbers were released?

They said it during an investor meeting not some bullshit tweet trying to spin facts about bullets shot or hours spent. The first line of the article says
"Sony has announced that Helldivers 2 has become PlayStation's fastest-selling game of all time, selling more than 12 million copies in its first 12 weeks on sale. Helldivers 2 has also surpassed Sony Santa Monica's God of War Ragnarok, which reached 11 million copies sold 75 days after its November 2022 release on PlayStation 4 and PS5."

 

[Fafalada]

My mobile Ampere laptop runs the game just fine, Switch 2 is a custom mobile Ampere. But I don't really think they need to. It's not Lego Horizon

Your laptop has significantly more CPU headroom than Switch 2 (and likely outperforms PS5 CPU as well). The game also performs quite badly on mobile PC APUs (Not just SD, but higher end ones - I suspect mostly bandwidth limited, but that's nothing Switch solves either).
Doesn't mean it can't be done (at a lower fps target if nothing else), but it's not a given.

 

[Sanepar]

Next month is my 20th anniversary working in different areas of the game industry, as dev I worked in over 40 published games, including top mobile or AAA publisher. And obviously have many friends in a ton of top places (including Sony teams).

You're the one who has no idea what you are talking about, and of how it works. Not me.

P.S.: As a random example yesterday, as part of the jury I gave awards on their ceremony to the graduated teams of this year the -probably- most import gamedev university of my country.


No, Ghost of Tsushima has 1697 people on its credits and its development started in 2014 and was under 6 years long.

And no, GoT didn't have a budget of under $60M. That's simply impossible and the source of that was a random annonimous -now deleted- Twitter account with zero credibility.


Spider-Man has 2002 people on its credits, its development took 4 years and its budget it's impossible that could have been 80M when its shorter spinoff with reused assets did cost 156M, its remaster $39M and its sequel $315M.

What did cost 81M was the way shorter, linear game Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart

In AAA games around 90% of the people who work on the game isn't from their lead development studio and are spread from all around NA, EU and Asia. And a huge percent of the game budget isn't from its development side, but from the marketing, PR and publishing sides.

And Sweden is a very expensive place to develop games, they have some of the highest salaries and taxes in Europe.

I really doubt a spiderman 3 would be capable of 10 million copies at full price after the disaster of spiderman 2.

If wolverine is full colour gay game i think will be a disaster too.

 

[robotman5]

That's awesome

 

[yurinka]

I really doubt a spiderman 3 would be capable of 10 million copies at full price after the disaster of spiderman 2.

If wolverine is full colour gay game i think will be a disaster too.

"Disaster" = broke sales records for any Sony game released before

I'd say they won't have balls to make Wolverine woke other than make their females ugly and androginous, plus to mention in a sentence that some (not Jane Grey) side NPC Marvel character as lesbian.

Regarding Spider-Man 3, I think that by the time it releases the woke trend will be dead and buried. So even if I'm sure it started with a lot of woke stuff, I think it will be progressively toned down and removed as Sony moves to a post-woke world and as they see more games tanking (in an important part) because of their wokism.

 

[Felessan]

Concord did irreparable damage that money can't fix. This generation as a whole has been very mediocre for Sony, even though they are making more money than ever

Mediocre for whom?
The fact that Sony making more money than ever literally means that there are a large crowd that are content with current direction and ready to pay a lot of money for current content proposition.

Like maybe 1st party efforts in gaas still maybe treated as partially successfull, their 3rd party gaas initiative is very successful. And for general crowd it doesn't really matter who made a game - amount, quality and diversity of content on a platform is what matters.

estimated cost of Concord is 400 million

Sony written of 400 mil and it was for all their gaas games under review last year, not just Concord.

 

[noob smokes]

Amazing long legs this game is havin see sony gaas can be done right when u dont chase the shitty trends like the garbage fortnite/overwatch games



Bring back socom & mag

 

[BlackTron]

Your laptop has significantly more CPU headroom than Switch 2 (and likely outperforms PS5 CPU as well). The game also performs quite badly on mobile PC APUs (Not just SD, but higher end ones - I suspect mostly bandwidth limited, but that's nothing Switch solves either).
Doesn't mean it can't be done (at a lower fps target if nothing else), but it's not a given.

I am sure my laptop and Switch 2 do not have the same specs (ESPECIALLY the CPU) but I was encouraged that it runs Cyberpunk pretty well.

You could be right of course, I've never done a forensic analysis of the game, just my impression at first blush.

 

[poppabk]

They said it during an investor meeting not some bullshit tweet trying to spin facts about bullets shot or hours spent. The first line of the article says
"Sony has announced that Helldivers 2 has become PlayStation's fastest-selling game of all time, selling more than 12 million copies in its first 12 weeks on sale. Helldivers 2 has also surpassed Sony Santa Monica's God of War Ragnarok, which reached 11 million copies sold 75 days after its November 2022 release on PlayStation 4 and PS5."

Those are some amazing numbers, haven't played 2 but me and my kids had a lot of fun accidentally grenading each other in the first one.
I just wish people would stop harping on releasing player numbers is an admittance of a failure or a flop, its driving me nuts.
Arrowhead have tweeted out player numbers, average number of hours played etc and the game is a huuuuge success.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Those are some amazing numbers, haven't played 2 but me and my kids had a lot of fun accidentally grenading each other in the first one.
I just wish people would stop harping on releasing player numbers is an admittance of a failure or a flop, its driving me nuts.
Arrowhead have tweeted out player numbers, average number of hours played etc and the game is a huuuuge success.

Helldivers 2 is next level.

If you don't want to get hooked on pure digital crack of the gameplay loop. Then I suggest you don't play it.

And by that, I mean YOU NEED TO PLAY THIS GAME.

 

[Come On Tars]

Glad the new event is hitting, my problem is I really don't love the Illuminate areas. They render the Bots and Bugs enemies and levels so good but the cities just don't work, feels last gen in comparison.

 

[coachmcguirk91]

Amazing long legs this game is havin see sony gaas can be done right when u dont chase the shitty trends like the garbage fortnite/overwatch games



Bring back socom & mag

I loved Socom games on PS2 but 3rd person PvP military shooters is a dead genre

 

[Paltheos]

Helldivers is great. Some of the bugs I've encountered in the past, few patches - character models becoming partially detached from the rest of the model and from the player tag, the autocannon just not firing after reloads - and enemies sometimes feeling overtuned (the fire bot shottys basically forcing fire-resistant gear) are frustrating but have never killed my vibe of the game. The experience is always fun.

My friends and I are always cautious with each new patch. Some of them don't want to play after the newest drop, but there's only one who's sworn off the game, and I think for him it's just that he doesn't like shooters that much (despite loving Helldivers 1).

 

[scydrex]

Wrong, estimated net revenue is 399 million, estimated cost of Concord is 400 million and that's just 1 title add in all the other failures and it's brown trousers time at Sony HQ.

Where did you find that net revenue and cost? Please share the source to read it and understand what you are saying. Are those official numbers or confirmed?