A Helldivers 2 Xbox release is "not up to" Arrowhead but to Sony and Phil Spencer to "duke out" - but if Sony says no, that's it

gamesradar.com:

Helldivers 2 players may only be able to spread managed democracy on PC and PS5 right now, but one Arrowhead community manager says it could "hypothetically" release on Xbox at some point, too – although it won't be up to the developers. 

Community manager Thomas 'Twinbeard' Petersson recently responded to a fan in the official Helldivers Discord server suggesting that an Xbox release is "never gonna happen." To this, Petersson simply says: "Who says it couldn't?"

He elaborates: "It's not up to us but to Sony and Phil [Spencer, head of Xbox] to duke out, but hypothetically speaking, if both partners think it would benefit them from a financial/brand standpoint, it could. If Sony believes it won't though, it won't."

This most likely ties into a point that Petersson reiterates in a separate thread – Sony ultimately owns the Helldivers IP. It's for that same reason that Arrowhead can't lead the charge with more Helldivers 2 merch – even though the likes of Petersson "wish there was a lot more cool stuff out there" for fans. He explains: "When it comes to legal matters and intellectual property, the brand 'Helldivers' is owned by Sony, so it's [them] who have the final say in such matters. We [of course] offer input and have discussions around it, though."

So then, it's out of Arrowhead's hands, but it's reassuring that, by the sound of it, there's no reason outright preventing a Helldivers 2 Xbox port from ever happening. For some of the more challenging Major Orders, it'd certainly be a relief to get support from another army of players, so here's hoping that Super Earth might be able to liberate Series X at some point in the future. 

Helldivers 2 player notices a mistake in the game's opening cinematic that even the game director never noticed in 2 years: "I don't know how many times we reviewed this."

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