Xbox Series X/S gamers will soon be able to spread managed democracy for the glory of Super Earth, as Sony and Arrowhead Game Studios’ cooperative third-person shooter Helldivers 2 is officially heading to Microsoft’s console on 26 August this year.
Dropping the news from orbit during an announcement stream, the game will also feature full cross-play with both the PS5 and PC, but is also currently available on the Xbox store for pre-order. Its release also marks a rather historic moment, as it will be the first ever Sony-published game on Xbox platforms, highlighting the former’s shift in strategy to bring its games to a wider audience.
“We know gamers have been asking for this for some time and we are so excited to bring more Helldivers into our game,” wrote game director Mikael Eriksson in an announcement post on Xbox Wire. “We have so much more in store for the future months and years – and the more players we have the more stories we can tell! The fight for Super Earth has only just begun.”
Xbox players are due to join the fight in the game’s overarching Galactic War, a real-time metagame where players work together to complete operations and liberate planets, facing off against the bug-like Terminids, the robotic Automatons, and most recently, taking the fight to Earth itself with the Heart of Democracy major update, defending the planet from mind-controlling xenophobic aliens known as the Illuminate.
Having a whole new faction of console players is bound to give the game a healthy boost to its player base, especially important for one that adopts a live-service model. Within the genre, Helldivers 2 does stand out as one of its more successful titles, currently still holding its position in the top 30 titles on Steam’s most played games list with a 24-hour peak of 45,745 concurrent players, more than a year after its launch in February last year. Its move to a new console and the inclusion of cross-play will likely increase this number further, as players can finally hop back into the game with their friends on Xbox.
Players can airdrop in new reinforcements when Helldivers 2 launches for the Xbox Series X|S on 26 August 2025.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
Si Jia
