Horizon Forbidden West Off to a Sturdy Enough Start on PC 1
Image: Push Square

There’s an argument that the novelty of Sony’s delayed single player PC ports has worn off, but Horizon Forbidden West is bucking that trend. The open world sequel, converted by Nixxes, has opened to a respectable peak of 35,168 concurrent users on Steam, making it the sixth biggest PS Studios launch on the platform to date – just a hair behind The Last of Us: Part 1. There’s a good chance it’ll overtake the Naughty Dog remake later in the weekend.

Horizon Zero Dawn previously peaked at 55,557 concurrent users, but as alluded to above, there was more of a novelty factor surrounding these early PS Studios ports. By all accounts, the Horizon Forbidden West port is flawless, with none of the bugs or technical issues that have plagued some of Sony’s other conversions. Acquiring port specialists Nixxes was probably one of the platform holder’s smarter moves.

Helldivers 2 has been such a success on PC for Sony that the platform holder may need to reconsider its release strategy moving forwards, although there’s still enormous value for the PlayStation brand as a whole in ensuring tentpole single player titles have a period of console exclusivity. It’ll be interesting to see how it responds to market dynamics moving forwards. In the here and now, though, we can probably tag Horizon Forbidden West’s port as a success.

[source steamdb.info]