these are uk numbers and you're ok extrapolating it to the whole world? but you didn't like the logic of comparing known steam numbers with a known fixed player cap?
Anyone playing the game back then knew using a combo of players in game and Steam Charts CCU to "prove" PC Helldivers II must be massively outselling the console version was an utter nonsense for obvious reasons.
Using actual UK
sales data (the only such available regional data we've got to work with of any recency) as a barometer for how the game might be doing worldwide? That hardly seems like a ridiculous exercise. We know Steam takes a larger slice of the pie in some regions and less in others, but the UK is rarely an outlier.
Using engagement metrics from 1 platform during a time the game's popularity outstripped the game's capacity was dumb, no critical thinking went into those actions. It's fair to question why that happened and why some are apparently still keen to stand by it when it's so flawed.
Chris himself said it was 60% on PC. Mat NPD also implied it was selling more on PC when the truth is PS5 is selling more.
Always with the agenda when it's Sony-related. They want to prove the console market is dying when it's Xbox only.
What that 60% PC figure represented has been largely used out of context, sometimes knowingly other times maybe not. Dring said on Feb 23 that 2nd week sales in Europe were practically 50/50 and were up 40% over week 1, and said this brought the total to around 40/60 in favour of PC for both weeks combined. That's his 60% people were throwing around. This data is Europe-only with UK and Germany excluded. So in non-UK, non-DE Europe, in its first week on sale it did bigger numbers on PC. In its 2nd week, when sales rose 40%, that 40/60 split had evened out to 50/50.
Today he said UK sales, where the game sales increased week-on-week by 115% then a further 21%, were 57/43 (GSD physical + digital). I'd like to see how anyone could spin that, to me it reinforces what we've heard form the start that it's pretty even.
The US engagement data Piscatella put out (which was also widely used to "prove" something it couldn't possibly hope to), suggested that just 1-in-20 PS5 players in the US sent some time in Helldivers II and 1-in-4 PC players did the same. That was Circana panel data - not actual hard data from the platform holders, but their own user sample panel extrapolated to the wider market. The public has no access to anything regarding their panel:- how it is selected, how large it is, the methodology for selection, control, maintenance etc. etc... If anything, to me these figures only suggested that their panel might be susceptible to producing wayward results either when a title is new, server capacity is an issue, basically all kinds of fruity stuff. But it was used to "prove" the game had am 80/20 split by some. Utter nonsense.
We know the game is selling really well on -both- platforms, it's topping sales charts all over the place in its first month on the market, and this day-and-date release with PC, for this kind of title, leaves the game and its future stronger as a whole for releasing this way. No one platform is proven to be out-performing the other so far. Nobody at Sony, Arrowhead or Steam will be at all unhappy about this situation, unlike the usual salty fanbois who are only happy when they're warring. People trying to spin bullshit narratives around this game's early success will never not be pointless.
Either Helldivers is amazing and should have stayed exclusive to move PS5 units or it's only doing amazing thanks to the extra players on Steam.
S5 split was my point.
