Helldivers 2 is going from strength to strength with the release of the second premium Warbond since the game launched. Its online player base is still going strong, and it currently ranks second on Steam’s list of top sellers.
According to an article published on Gameindustry.biz, which covers sales data from GSD, which tracks both physical and digital games in the UK, Helldivers 2’s success may be even bigger than we thought. Not only did the article note that Helldivers 2 has been the best-selling game for two months in a row, but it also noted that “sales are now trending ahead of Spider-Man 2 (Sony’s last major release) from later in the same period.” .”
Of course, there are a few things to consider in that equation. Helldivers 2 is a much cheaper game than Spider-Man 2 and will be available on both platforms at launch. But even taking that into account, those numbers are incredibly good.
But strangely, neither Sony nor Arrowhead have actually provided proper confirmation on how much the game has sold. For example, when Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was released, Sony had no trouble boasting about its success.
So we can only guess how successful the game was. The last time we got anything remotely resembling official word was when Arrowhead’s CEO appeared to confirm someone’s 3 million sales guess.
Out of curiosity, I reached out to Arrowhead and asked why they seem cautious about confirming obvious names when the studio is generally so eager to praise them for their success. Maybe I’ll hear something.
The Gameindustry.biz article continues to discuss other games, and here we see the surprising return of Command & Conquer. Several Command & Conquer games that had been missing from Steam have finally been added to the storefront, either separately or as part of the Mammoth (Tanks) bundle, and there’s also potential news that more Command & Conquer remasters are on the way. It looks like people were pretty happy, as C&C: Generals and C&C: Red Alert 2 broke into the top 10 best-selling games in the UK in March. In my book, it’s awesome.
Aside from that, the charts weren’t very interesting. Dragon’s Dogma 2 comes in third behind EA Sports FC 24 and Helldivers 2, and Hogwarts Legacy comes in at #9, continuing to show Warner Bros. why doubling down on their live offerings is a terrible plan.
On the hardware side, console sales are up 22% from last month but down 15% from March of last year. However, the article mentions that March 2023 is when PS5 consoles will finally be available for supply, resulting in a significant surge in sales. To be more specific, PS5 sales are down 9% compared to March of last year, but still up 25% compared to last month. Not too shabby.
It will be interesting to see how official confirmation of the rumored PS5 Pro will impact sales.
Nintendo Switch also rose 20% month-on-month, but fell 20% year-over-year. This appears to be a 19% month-on-month increase, but is enough to beat Xbox, which is down 18% year-over-year.
If you want to dig deeper into everything, check out this Gameindustry.biz article. Finally, here is the UK physical and digital sales chart for March 2024:
| location | title |
| One | Helldiver 2 (Sony) |
| 2 | EA Sports FC 24 (EA) |
| three | Dragon’s Dogma 2 (Capcom) |
| 4 | WWE 2K24 (2K Games) |
| 5 | Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (Square Enix) |
| 6 | Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege (Ubisoft) |
| 7 | Command & Conquer: Generals (EA) |
| 8 | Grand Theft Auto 5 (Rockstar) |
| 9 | Hogwarts Legacy (Warner Bros.) |
| 10 | Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 (EA) |