Here are PlayStation’s Top 7 downloaded games for March 2024

Sony on Monday published its regular look back at the most-downloaded video games to PlayStation for March, and it’s a good snapshot of what shaped video gaming’s conversation on the whole, not just for that console’s audience, over the preceding month. There are breakout hits alongside long-tail mainstays, with sports titles, as they always do, lurking at the edges.

Whether you were with the vanguard of one of these new releases or you were immersed in something else at the moment, here are the top seven games downloaded by the more than 100 million users of the PlayStation Network. The full list, broken down by platform and region, is here.

Helldivers 2 is the first breakout hit of 2024, launching in early February on PlayStation and PC and immediately facing server loads totaling hundreds of thousands of players in its first two weeks of release.

Helldivers 2 is a cooperative multiplayer-only game, markedly different from its predecessor, which was a top-down shooter that still drew a strong audience when it launched in 2015. The sequel takes the against-all-odds, tactically demanding setup of the first game and applies it in a more engaging and immersive third-person perspective. It’s more than just the most-downloaded PlayStation Network game, it’s also the biggest-ever Steam launch for a Sony-published title.

MLB The Show 24, by SIE San Diego Studio, is a full-service baseball simulation that has been an annual winner among sports fans since its inception more than 15 years ago. That doesn’t mean its makers can rest on their laurels.

This year, MLB The Show 24 introduces women as playable stars in all modes, making a big play to expand their audience to those fans who have also dreamed about being big leaguers, even knowing they never had a chance at it. Women feature prominently in the Storylines mode that was introduced in 2023, a series of interactive vignettes which tell the lesser-known stories of professional players from baseball’s segregated era. They’re also present for Road to the Show, the game’s real jewel. It’s a rich, vicarious single-player fantasy in which users create their superstar and take them all the way to the Major Leagues.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is, as the title says, a sequel — to something published 12 years ago, but never forgotten by its cult audience. This open-world fantasy adventure is not exactly a Soulslike. Still, there’s little wonder that the fandom that has gathered for that sub-genre over the past decade, especially for games like 2022’s Elden Ring, would have a natural and fervent interest in this open-world epic.

WWE 2K24 has a tough task ahead of it every year, which is basically, “How do you simulate something that is, uh, fake?” Somehow, 2K Sports has pulled it off going back three years, presenting professional wrestling and all of its behind-the-scenes intrigue as movable pieces on a delightful chess board of mayhem, as if it was, ahem, a “real” sport.

The big showpieces this year include a 40-year retrospective on Wrestlemania. MyRise, the created-player career mode, once again delivers two unique storylines whether players choose to play as a female or male superstar. And those who enjoy the meta of pro wrestling — the angles, the matchings and the like that makes it such an athletic soap opera — will find plenty to love in a refined MyGM mode that doesn’t make huge changes, but knows how to dust up the successes of the past two games without turning over any teacups.

Madden NFL 24 didn’t say goodbye when the last of Super Bowl LVIII’s confetti fell on the Kansas City Chiefs in early February. Thanks to the live service offerings of its Ultimate Team mode, Madden outdrew its basketball brethren in the first month of the sport’s offseason, at least on PlayStation. American football is a year-round sport, like it or not, and its video game always has something on offer in the Madden Ultimate Team live service suite.

Few early-aughts console series are as beloved as Battlefront, and when you add the natural appeal of Star Wars, it’s easy to understand why this two-game bundle (comprising 2004’s Battlefront and 2005’s Battlefront II) would be such a hit among nostalgic fans. Both games were brought to modern hardware in 2019 and 2020. But this collection, if not actually a remake or a remaster, is still more than a straight port and promises the multiplayer action that made the first two such a long-playing hit on PlayStation 2.

Here’s a surprise. Rainbow Six Siege wasn’t in the top 20 of this list the previous month, but here it shows up outdrawing EA Sports FC 24, NBA 2K24, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. This is partly attributable to the March launch of Operation Deadly Omen, the first season of this live service game’s ninth year. And no, Rainbow Six Siege is still not a free-to-play game. Whether Fortnite is spinning up its latest celebrity crossover or Destiny 2 is waiting on its next big expansion, Siege always has your six covered.

Featured image: Helldivers 2 on Steam

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