Death Stranding 2: On the Beach has now crossed 2.5 million copies sold across PlayStation 5 and PC. That figure comes from analyst estimates published this week, landing at a particularly charged moment: Sony had just announced it was stepping away from publishing Hideo Kojima's next project, Physint, with Xbox swooping in to fill that role. Naturally, questions started flying about whether Death Stranding 2 underperformed badly enough to sour the relationship.
The short answer is: it depends on what you consider success.
Where the 2.5 million came from
The split between platforms tells an interesting story. Of those 2.5 million copies, roughly 1.8 million were sold on PS5 and around 700,000 on PC via Steam. The game launched on PS5 in June 2025 as a console exclusive, with the PC port following in late March 2026, so the console-heavy split makes sense on paper.
Here's the thing though: the momentum didn't hold. In the first two months alone, Death Stranding 2 moved approximately 1 million PS5 copies, with June 2025 pulling in around 722,000 sales on its own. By August 2025, that number had dropped to under 30,000. The front-loaded nature is sharp even by AAA standards, with roughly 65 percent of the PS5 revenue coming in those first two months.
On Steam, the game sold around 550,000 copies in its first two months after the March 2026 PC launch, which accounts for about 80 percent of its total lifetime PC sales. Repeated price discounts on the platform haven't done much to push the needle further, which is a pattern that tends to emerge when a game's initial audience has already been captured.
How it stacks up against the original
For context, the original Death Stranding has sold around 5 million copies since its 2019 release, generating approximately $243 million in total revenue. The PS4 version made up 71 percent of those sales, with PC at 25 percent and Xbox accounting for the remaining 4 percent.
That comparison sounds damaging at first glance, but it's worth remembering the original has had seven years of deep discounts and multiple platform releases to build that number. Death Stranding 2 is less than two years old and currently limited to PS5 and PC. No Xbox version has been announced.
Together, the two games have generated an estimated $413 million in combined revenue for Kojima Productions and Sony.
The Physint factor
The timing of this sales data matters. Sony's decision to cancel its publishing deal for Physint, Kojima's genre-blending action-espionage follow-up, came as a surprise to Kojima himself, who said as much publicly in June. Rumors point to the project going well over budget and Sony being reluctant to sink hundreds of millions more into a game without guaranteed exclusivity, given the studio's history of eventually bringing titles to PC.
Xbox has since stepped in to publish Physint, continuing a growing relationship with Kojima Productions that already includes the horror project OD. Whether Death Stranding 2's sales directly influenced Sony's exit is something nobody outside the boardroom can say for certain, but the timing lines up.
What this means for players still in the game
If you're still working through Death Stranding 2 or just picked it up during one of those PC discounts, the sales numbers don't change your experience. The game is fully supported, and Kojima Productions has already rolled out major post-launch updates including a new difficulty mode, replayable bosses, and additional cutscenes.
For players looking to get more out of the game, our Death Stranding 2: On the Beach guides cover everything from resource farming to skill tree optimization. If you're chasing completion, the complete PC achievement guide walks through all 55 achievements including the ones that require serious logistics grinding. The game's audience may be smaller than Sony hoped, but the players who are in it tend to be deep in it.
