Horizon Hunters Gathering Is Guerrilla's Next Big PS5 Game, Horizon 3 Still Years Away

It's kinda insane to me that Insomniac is the only first party studio that manages to produce multiple games at the same time (as far as we know? Might have changed with Spider-Man 2 and afterwards).

Sony DESPERATELY needs more studios. Even more so now where games take 6 to 8 years to be made and it looks like some studios will focus on areas other than the single-player games that the fan base demands.

I'm happy to wait but after that can they move onto a brand new IP,. Don't get me wrong I like the Horizon franchise, but there's only so much you do with it. I have same energy with Sucker Punch and the Ghost series.

Cool, this soulless multiplayer focused game creates a nice void in which I can chip away at the old backlog while I wait for the next real Horizon game.

I enjoyed the first Horizon but the second one had the most bland, cliche and unoriginal final arc for a game with such high production values. Or it is just me, I don't know. The DLC was more of the same but with a romance that came from nowhere for good measure.

That said the cliffhanger in the end is a least kind of interesting, providing that you still remember it if or when the series continues. I have not played any spin off so I don't know if those elements are addressed.

So Guerrilla was capable of releasing and supporting this but Naughty Dog couldn't support Factions? Which I would have been more excited to play.

Worst timeline…

I finally played Helldivers 2 yesterday with friends and it was a blast. Definitely the best Sony-published online/co-op game.

That did get me thinking. The only really successful PlayStation Studios online game in the PS5 generation is really Helldivers, which is developed by Arrowhead, an independent studio. Every other game—excluding Destruction AllStars, a Lucid-developed game that most people already forgot about—was developed by an in-house PlayStation Studios team, and most or all of them failed. Destiny 2 doesn't really count, that released before Sony bought Bungie.

I wonder if there's a reason for that, if Arrowhead's independent nature made them more free from Sony Interactive's input, or if Arrowhead just has more experience compared to other PlayStation Studios.

I'm hoping Horizon Hunters Gathering is different. I do really like the art style, contrary to some other commenters here, and I think that it could be fun, but I worry that it'll fall for the same issues that the last few projects like Concord, Firewall Ultra, and their many cancelled titles have. I'm hoping for the best, but worried for the worst.

I actually Hope this does succeed because Sony needs some variety of different games not to mention I look forward to seeing how guerrilla games pushs the Decima engine with a more colorful art style.

Horizon 3 I will definitely be looking forward too, but this multiplayer Fortnite dauntless horizon game is not my cup of tea 👀

Reminds me of outlast & how the devs sold out for live service slop before releasing a third game

Makes sense since they're putting a lot of resources into Hunters. Not a lot of dev teams can be like From Soft where they have a few different games being worked on at the same time.

@HotGoomba But that's the thing, all they need is one online game to pop off and they will make bank, your example of Helldivers 2 proves that, Yes it wasn't done by a first party studio, but Sony won't mind as they own the IP and thus reap the rewards.

@nomither6 But Outlast Trails, is loved by the fan base.

@Oram77 That is very true. Helldivers being successful is a net-positive for Sony Interactive Entertainment, as, in-house or not, it is their title, and it's likely made up for the cancellations and the failure of Concord, and even if Horizon Hunters Gathering or Marathon fail or don't meet expectations, they have enough money to continue funding more online games and get another success story like Helldivers.

WE DON’T WANT THIS FORTNITE IMITATION

The sheer amount of money, time, and resources Sony's studios has wasted this generation is embarrassing. Yet another live service game that isn't appealing to the majority audience is already DOA, along with the likes of Concord, Sony Bend's cancelled game, $3Billion Bungie's upcoming disaster... They are literally burning money.

@AdamNovice According to these people every single game with a Colorful art style is copying fortnite.

What a waste of time, hope they don’t regret it later.

@AdamNovice I guess so. I deleted my comment cause I'm starting to get too negative. I'll put it on my not interested list and move on.

I'm not in love with the character designs, but I'm always down for online co-op games with a story.

I'm kinda interested on trying the game out but unfortunately, everytime I try to sign up for the playtest, it keeps redirecting me to the country selection page before kicking me back to the website home page. Not sure if it's the device or browser I'm using.

As much as I dislike Sony's — hopefully mostly dead — live-service push and as tired as Forbidden West made me of the good-first-impression Horizon franchise, I've been cautiously optimistic about a co-op Horizon game since we started hearing about one. And this looks fine — at worst.

Yes, the multiplayer push is cynical. But it could still be quite fun, regardless. Yes, its art style is Fortnite-sterile, but I honestly prefer that to more generic-realism. If this is any good, I might give it a whirl. If not...eh. I've better things to worry about than the quality and success of a Horizon multiplayer spinoff.

Well hopefully they release horizon 3, 4 and 5 soon, God knows when we will get horizon 6 as per the question? Unless your talking about forza horizon 6

I find it funny when people want development times to be shortened, while also being against companies using AI-generated assets, which is a solution to shortening development times, while also wanting games to have high quality, which would lengthen development times. You just gotta love unreasonable demands.

@Gr8VngnzN4esAngr you forgot to mention ND's cancelled last of us online (factions). i bet the resourses they lost on that is twice as much as the horizon mmo due to the fidelity ND was striving for. there was also the cancelled live service games for god of war, twisted metal and spiderman. we're talking about $1-2b+ flushed away

@LtSarge That perfectly sums up gamers nowadays

@LtSarge It's a tough one but I'll take longer dev times if it means we won't have AI generated art but that's not happening.

Taking a 10 year break between games 2 and 3 is insane!

Im guessing fornite is the first coloured game by the comments or they trying to use fornite as a diss? one of the most successful games in recent years even pushing for crossplay on console ect ect

@LtSarge I'd say there's a lot of assumption in this comment.

1. AI doesn't guarantee 'high quality.'
2. The problems with AI go well beyond moral outrage.
3. There are other solutions to ballooning dev-times.
4. Plenty want more frequent game releases while accepting such games would not match the scope of 5-8 year dev cycles.

Hell, I've seen little evidence that AI would even significantly increase game output. Really just execs and tech bros hyping it up by saying it will. Conveniently, that's all it really takes to woo investors...

I mean, I think of it this way: What games are delayed because of slow asset development? Maybe it can slow down other teams, sure. I remember reading about how difficult The Witcher 3's quest writers had refining scripts and line delivery before they had character models, animations, and...a functional game that didn't crash every 5 minutes. But they still pulled it off just fine; they just had to wait until every other team was almost done before deep diving into it. Maybe with AI they could've had more elaborate placeholders to make the process smoother. But the game didn't spend a year sitting on narrative designers; maybe the game could've saved 3-6 months...I dunno if that's really going to translate to insanely more efficient game development with ongoing implementation. Unless the game is just straight up 50% AI, between art assets, animation, code, etc. At which point, we have to start having conversations about whether AI art actually has any real value.

It's crazy how some people complaining as if a taboo for Guerilla to make a spinoff co-op game with stylistic artstyle that separate it with mainline Horizon. It's like complaining about Square made FF spinoff like Vagrant Story or Chocobo Dungeon that has different aesthetic and gameplay than mainline FF games.

Heh. Anyway. This gen already have multiple Horizon games to satisfy the fans:

• Forbidden West + Burning Shores DLC
• Call of the Mountain
• Zero Dawn remastered
• Lego Horizon
• Steel Frontier
• and Hunters Gathering

So it's okay. Guerilla can take their time cooking the 3rd mainline Horizon.

@Porco It's insane. And just imagine if Intergalactic flops? A major shake up at the top is needed.

All I can say.
Bring back the glory PS4 era, when Sony Studios as a whole were definitely at their best and working on the games I had a PS4 and a PS5 for.

It’s simple to judge, I have all three consoles.

At the year end play hours role up.
The first two years of the PS5 the best years.
PS5 won those two years game hours played, easy.
The following three years they have come third, behind Nintendo and Xbox.
It says it all for and the vast difference from the PS4 and first two years of the PS5 era.

They have definitely lost money in the last three years from me, as there has hardly been a Sony studio game released or what I have wanted to play compared to the PS4 era.

@somnambulance
Basically it’s one super big AAA per year from Sony of games I like.
Astro Bot
Ghost of Yotei
Probably Wolverine 2026

And to think it will probably be 7 years once released or if, since we have had a new Naughty Dog game.

@nomither6 yep. Didn’t they announce Outlast 3 like 9 years ago?

The artstyle is genuinely horrid. It’s not something I’ll play, and we’ll see if it gains an audience.

Should just cancel it. No point in making concord 4.

Did Sony not learn anything from concord

@KillerBoy They didn't decide to do this game after Concord. Resources were already poured into this game long before they knew concord was gonna flop. Horizon FW will be 4yrs old this month already. So....

This is terrible news. Horizon FW will be 4yrs old this month and its barely being worked on? There was only 5yrs between H1 and 2. So to think that this Co-op rubbish set Horizon 3 back many years is crazy. Same thing with Interstellar. If it wasn't for that TLOU live service that didn't even see the light of day, we'd prob be playing Interstellar by now.

I stand by Sony. They will always be my preferred platform. But they sure are lucky Xbox really crapped the sheets the last 2 gens, or they'd be in deep.

If you want to find a silver lining in all this though, I'd have to say, the thought of a Horizon game running on a ps6 version of Decima engine does sound pretty amazing though

@PuppetMaster this game isn’t separated from the main game it’s canon! The studio was obviously pushed into making this game hence the reason they start the introduction video in an almost apologetic manner.

@Boxmonkey They apologized because they knew people on the Internet like to assume the worst without clarification.

@jFug yes. also, damn was 2017 really nine years ago?! 😭

More garbage from Sony.

@Boxmonkey A spin-off can still canon to main games. Example; RE Code Veronica, Outbreak, Dead Aim, Revelations, and Gun Survivor are spinoff and their story are canon.

And like @Areus said, they apologized because they knew some people gonna throw a tantrum.

But this complaint is funny coming from you who put Horizon: Zero Dawn as one of your "Nope" list. You don't play or like Horizon so why are you here complaining about this game???

@AdamNovice 2028 is crazy optimistic if you ask me, I'd estimate at least a solid 8.5 years between games (late 2030) given that they deprioritized Horizon: Nemesis (or whatever the name is going to be)

@ED_209 I disagree, Sony doesn’t need more studios, this is clearly still a consequence of Jim Ryan’s mandate for every first-party studio to develop live-service games, which might go down in history as the worst decision from PlayStation ever, it obliterated half the first-party games from this generation.

We got our new Horizon game at the start of this gen and I only paid $10 bucks for the remake. I couldn't be more okay with waiting for a 3rd.

That and the game's combat and enemies just begs for some kind of Monster Hunter like experience so I'm actually excited to see what those two are like.

It took me a long time to get round to playing the first horizon game and I really enjoyed it. The 2nd game is still on my to play list but I've always got something else on the go but I'll give it a play eventually. This entry however is going to be a pass for me as its art style and general aesthetic is a big turn off for me. It just looks like fortnite and a dozen other cell shaded games and I don't mean in a negative way because I know there are people who'll be really wanting a game like this so on that front I hope it does well and they enjoy it. I wish they would give us another killzone entry but I guess it's a dead franchise now and the chances of a remake or remaster of the original trilogy are none existent now too.

I would of thought that Guerrilla would of earned a little good faith, what with all the quality games they've released. I've recently finished playing Borderlands 4 with my brother and we're now playing through Wayfinder, so I'm actually quite liking the idea of a co-op Horizon game.

@HotGoomba helldivers 2 is superb in every way and it's good to hear that you are finally enjoying it. Arc raiders is equally as good so don't pass that over if you like the online co-op shenanigans it brings to the table.

@Areus copying? I'd say inspired by as its quite clearly an inspiration but I'm getting fortnite,kingdoms of amalur and torchlight vibes myself. Opinions vary from person to person.

@Northern_munkey Throw Borderlands and free realms in there.

@Areus indeed.

@somnambulance "I miss when we had games like Flower, Bound, and Gravity Rush filled the empty space between bigger releases"

You mean similar to last year indie / AA console exclusives games like Sword of the Sea (by Flower / Journey devs), The Midnight Walk, Baby Steps, or Lumines Arise that Sony promoted at SoP and their blog?
https://blog.playstation.com/2025/12/22/10-indie-games-from-2025-that-delighted-the-playstation-indies-teams/

And last month there's Cairn which also console exclusive and i remembered Sony showed it on SoP.

I think Sony is still trying for those games. They just don't do it in-house anymore like Gravity Rush, Afrika, or Tokyo Jungle because they didn't sold well. If only 15-20% of PS fans buy those games...

@PuppetMaster "They just don't do it in-house anymore."

I reckon that's what he's talking about, right. He misses when Sony was internally developing/producing a variety of quality, interesting games. That's really what his whole comment was about; he wasn't saying there aren't games like that on the PS5, rather that Sony's own games have been lacking this generation.

It's like, Hades II and Orbitals are Switch exclusives. They've received a lot of promotion from Nintendo (honestly, like 25% of all console indie games are receiving pretty notable promotion from Nintendo). Yet, I don't think that means fans can't bemoan the lack of classic series like F-Zero or Wario Land. Or wistfully reminisce about the Pushmo/Dillion era of Nintendo where they were putting out experimental, relatively small new IP.

Or, to put it bluntly, Hades II and Orbitals are NOT Nintendo games. Likewise, Sword of the Sea, The Midnight Walk, Baby Steps, and Lumines Arise are NOT PlayStation games.

@RoomWithaMoose He mention Flower and Bounds and those wasn't by Sony devs either despite they're PS exclusives. That's why i mention Sword of the Sea, The Midnight Walk, Lumines Arise, and Baby Steps because they're in similar situation like Flower and Bounds.

So my whole point still stand: we're still getting those indie / AA console exclusives games between big releases despite they aren't by Sony devs.

Can't blame Sony devs either for stepping away from niche AA experimental games. The numbers aren't lying. They can't keep making games that doesn't sell or they'll end up in the chopping block.

Like i said, if only 15-20% of PS fans buy Gravity Rush, Afrika, and Tokyo Jungle or at least they sold more than 1-2 million copies maybe we will get more of those by Sony devs. But sadly the majority of PS fans doesn't give a flying f* about those games 🤷‍♂️

@PuppetMaster I believe Flower and Bound were both published by Sony. As with many alike games of the time, I'm pretty sure Santa Monica helped with Bound. Not too sure about Flower, but I think they helped on Journey, too.

And you can say this is pedantic — after all, is there really much difference between being a publisher and assisting with funding. But still, Flower and Journey feel like PlayStation games to me (we were robbed of that Journey/Shadow of the Colossus level in All-Stars Battle Royale, I tellz ya). Sword of the Sea and Baby Steps emphatically do not.

I wish failure upon it! I hate GaS

Pushsquare desperately trying to make Bluesky a thing will never not be funny (while linking to X 😂).

@StitchJones
You summed that up perfect if there was ever a chance or a generation since the Xbox360 era for Microsoft to have had ago at Sonys console dominance it would have been this generation.

I don’t even think Microsoft thought Sony would have taken this generation this way games wise. I think they just thought it would have been another PS4 era with more big AAA Sony studio games coming thick and fast.
And yep we would have had ND first new big AAA game on the PS5 by now and getting near to another Horizon campaign game or maybe a new IP.

If you take Sony and Microsoft it has been a dire generation overall.

There has been far to much miss direction and management and excuses and definitely trying to money crab and terrible excuses to increase prices to easily, from both of them.
Between the pair of them they haven’t but they could easily kill the console game market overnight. Forget us I’m taking general public, the big sales.
I know more with PCs gaming now percentage wise than I did in the mighty PS4 era. So there is a little shift there.

No no clearly the live service push is having no effect on the single player stuff.

I wish they just make a splinter team to work on this crap

So guerilla are now a horizon only studio it seems. I had ip fatigue after forbidden west and have barely any excitement for any more let alone two new games.

Not for me but there are some really puerile comments here. The need to bring up concord on every gaas related comment section is embarrassing. Yes Sony's gaas push will have more failures than successes but I'm sure they knew that to begin with, they only need a couple to succeed.
I expect this and Marathon to have moderate success (enough to at least make back dev costs) and I hope money made from these games is put back into making high quality single player games.
The fact is mmo/gaas is big business even if that doesn't reflect the sentiments/preferences of people with profiles on here.
The ironic thing I've heard people say on here is that those who only play FIFA, Cod, Fortnite aren't really gamers and yet whilst you whinge on websites like these they are probably spending their time actually gaming.

@belmont Definitely not you, they dropped the ball so hard when it came to the story, the first one felt like it had this great mystery behind it, ultimately finding out what happened and why the robot dinosaurs exist etc. Then suddenly we have seemingly invincible space people from 1000 years ago? Awful.

@Llamageddon We will never, ever let Sony forget or memory hole Concord. They need to be reminded of it at every turn so they don’t repeat the same mistakes again.

Sadly, it seems like they learn very, very slowly. The existence of this game instead of focusing on Horizon 3 is proof.

@PuppetMaster You’re a 100% right! Sony still gives us those small AA/indie games in between. And i can only laugh when some people here move those goalposts around. First they complain they’re not made by in house studios, then when you explain that the games that were mentioned also werent made by in house studios, all of sudden its not about in house studios anymore, its about whethere they “feel” like Playstation games to them, Lol!

And you’re right, onenof the reasons they dont do them in house anymore, is because most of these efforts in the past havent dont well commercially. It really is pedantic to argue that they dont offer AA/indie games because they’re not made in house, because that is just a production decision, many publishers opt this route for some of their games.

All the examples you made are Playstation console exclusives, and some have been published and some even funded or helped developed by Sony.

The people complaining that Playstation doesnt do AA/indie in between anymore are totally ignoring all these exclusive games

this is the issue with gaming these days , you need to take everything with a grain of salt , this isn't an actual news announcement but a guy making a guess on when something could be coming out.

Prefer a new IP after Horizon Forbidden West I'd had enough of robo Dino's

@dskatter I think it’s hardly about them forgetting Concord, rather than some games were already so far in development and they decided to go along with it.

Also, many people seem to enjoy games like these. I’m not one of them btw, and i personally dont play any of those popular games like Fortnite or Marvel Rivals, but that doesnt mean other people feel the same way of course.

Sony has access to way more data than us, and sees that a majority of gamers likes a certain type of games. Thats why many publishers try their hand at creating those games. It’s not like these publishers just guess what games to make, or read Push Square comments from a hardcore niche group of gamers just to focus development on what we want. They look at where the money is spent by the majority. Do i think thats sometimes unfortunate? Yes! Do i think that’s totally unreasonable for a business to do? No.

Of course games may flop, like many do with all publishers, because its always a gamble how well things are received, but its not totally irational for publishers to try.

Just to be clear, i’m not saying i like those types of games either, i just understand that not every game Sony makes will be for me, and i try to add nuance as towhy they are doing it. Unfortunately our taste isnt the mainstream, nor the ones that makes the most money.

And whether they succeed with games like these is hard to gauge, because most of what succeeds isnt to my taste either. Not saying you’re one of them, but all these people yelling online, about Sony not creating what they want them to create, is getting real cringy

“I dont like it, therefore it shouldnt exist” 🤦🏻‍♂️

"Next big game", did you write that with a straight face?

Holy *****, some of the character designs are horrendous.

They can keep it. Come on guerilla don’t stoop to this level. You are better than this!

I'm sorry Guerrilla, but I won't be supporting you until Horizon 3 comes out. I have both previous games and enjoyed them immensely, but multiplayer fare is not my cup of tea at all.

@LogicStrikesAgain lol yeah. At this point i'm not sure what some people really want. They got what they asked for but somehow they're ignoring those small games.

I myself bought so many small / niche games and i never ever get "this or that game feels like they don't look like a playstation game". Heck, I don't even care that much if Sony is the one who made those games. If they looks fun to me and available on PS then i'll buy it.

@AdamNovice
>A Remedy developer said recenty that they made Firebreak because they wanted to expand their audience beyond those that just play cinematic single player games, this is the same thing.

And it surely ended well, didn't it?

@Nnfyrbsnss maybe they meant it had a big file size? 😅

I really don’t understand how people need Sony to make games for them to feel good about their PlayStation console. I honestly don’t care about a dev/publisher. None of that should matter to a gamer! If the game is good then who cares who made it? It’s like going to a Chinese restaurant and getting some really good Chinese food but can’t enjoy it because the chef is a white guy from Arkansas.

Honestly, this generation releases good/great games every month. The thing is so many gamers look to a games budget to determine its worth. AAA or AA comes up so often it’s ridiculous! Why do we, the consumer, care so much about the board room decisions? I’ve played 10 games recently, most of which are 7/10 rated, and I’ve had so much fun.

@AdamNovice what you said about asking gamers what they want reminds me of when a friend of mine worked for a local radio station. Of course you know radio plays the same music daily. So, when people were complaining about this, the station started playing different music each day. They were flooded with complaints that they weren’t playing what they usually played. And that sums up everything!

@Greifchen why did they give the huge woman a pegleg.

More time and resources being squandered chasing the GAAS dragon. I’d be very surprised if this winds up a hit; it looks generic and boring. They should have focused on making Horizon 3 instead.

Well I wont be playing this one either way. Looks a mp game aimed towards drawing in children.

@OldGamer999 well said man. I tend to like to find the positives in these kinds of things so this is what I'll add. Man this is the perfect time for R* to be on the cusp of a new GTA game and for many reasons. The GTA affect has flooded our libraries with a ton of releases all last year and will be the same this year too. So despite Sony playing this live service card and fumbling on some big studios caught in that mess for now, we still have a crap ton of games to play. And then finally in NOV the beast of GTA will drop which will soften the blow even further. Saros, Wolverine, Phantom blade 0 to name a few in the near future pipeline as well.

So if there was a gaming drought on top of what Sony decided, this would be brutal. In no world should you be 5yrs into your console and your best studio (naughty dog) hasn't released yet and is still likely over a year away with Intergalactic.

And the last silver lining is, as i stated above, the thought of Horizon 3 being built on a ps6 version of Decima does indeed sound F'in awesome. Also, since everyone seems happy ps6 is likely pushed out way farther then 2027 and most thinking ps5 has plenty of legs left, this live service flub aligned Sony 1st party with ps6 launch territory. That would sure up great games at launch for the next gen. Esp if Horizon 3 is a launch game. Maybe Kojimas Physint can be launch day or window. Sucker punch would be far along in their next title by then.

To sum up, since there def is no shortage of great games to play right now and this live service blunder being washed out of their system by ps6, I have 100% faith Sony will right the ship in the coming years and ps6 will be back to the Sony we love.

@StitchJones
I think if Horizon 3 was a PS6 day one launch game I could let them off.
I would have so much preffered we got a new Killzone campaign AAA from them rather than a multiplayer cartoon fortnight type thing 😂

@Areus I mean variety is a stretch? Its a live service game. With a 3 person co op.

I think when we say variety, we mean more than just third person and that type of genre.

All of playstations outings right now have been open world or semi open world with their trade mark 3rd person adventure.

Bring me back a short 10 to 15 hours epic adventure like uncharted or a totally different genre, or a first person shooter single player.

Not a same gameplay as horizon but online with debatable looking graphics and not really what many wanted from a online horizon game.

@OldGamer999 Hard to say about Horizon 3 cause this live service thing set them back. But maybe it was planned all along for ps6. we'll never know. And I'm def with you on killzone instead of this Coop Horizon trash. Killzone multiplayer was fun and different from BF and COD. I still remember Killzone 2 online, remember when you scored a kill it made that kill confirmed sound? It was kind of like a squeak-click sound. I still remember that tone like it was yesterday. A new killzone in DS2's ver. of Decima engine would be a banger of a game.

With Halo kind of being trash for ages now since 343 dropped that ball ages ago and BF just starting to get back to form, while COD is finally stumbling, there's much more room and need for a unique 1st party exclusive FPS shooter and its better setup to thrive right now.

I would love a new Resistance game first before Spiderman 3 as well. But it seems like Sony has no interest in a 1st party FPS shooter.

No thanks ill give this a wide berth i lov3 horizon but not this single player or nothing i dont know many people or anyone who asked for this

I hope they release a new multiplayer game at least twice a year or even more just to annoy the people who hate on multiplayer games

Hard to let PlayStation off the hook at all here. Maybe I'm more angry about this than the average person since Horizon is the reason why I'm still on the PlayStation platform when I had a choice to go one way or the other at the start of this generation.

It's amazing how Insomniac is the only 1st party developer that's able to develop more than 1 game at a time, at least for the most part. The real PlayStation fans want Horizon 3, not a multiplayer Horizon game, so doing this has done exactly what I feared it would. Set Guerrilla back enough that Horizon 3 is still years away.

Also, there's no reason why it would've been planned for PS6 all along since Horizon Forbidden West came out in 2022. The fact that the PS6 is likely not coming out as planned makes that even less likely now. They should've easily been able to do the last 2 entries in the trilogy on PS5, regardless of whether PS6 was originally planned to come out sooner than it will now.

@datamonkey i mean do you blame them , forbiden west outsold the entire killzone franchise alone. if more people bought killzone , it would still be around.

@KilloWertz honestly the only people that would know when the next horizon game is coming out is Guerrilla so i would just take whatever jason says as a rumor and not officially him saying its coming out in 3 years.

@AhmadSumadi Although there a different vibe in the first party output, what you say is very true, in my experience — there’s so many awesome games coming to the PlayStation platform on a monthly basis, it hasn’t affected my enjoyment of the generation. I love the first and second party games and they have a special shine to them, but the rest of the industry is doing a great job too and my backlog has never been larger.

@LogicStrikesAgain @PuppetMaster Following along with your conversation, I have to agree. The perception that Sony doesn’t have exclusive AA/indie games is not entirely as bad as people make of it. And you’re right — The smaller niche games simply don’t sell, unfortunately.

The third party exclusives and China Hero Project and other support in India, Korea and elsewhere has now taken the place of the first party AA. The indie scene seems strong without Sony having its own studios.

@IOI - Nah, I think it's funny that everyone is sure that all studios were forced to produce live service games. Encouraged? Probably. But forced? I highly doubt it.

Guerrilla has been saying for years that it wanted to do something multiplayer in the Horizon franchise. Hell, the first concept arts for Zero Dawn showed a group of hunters chasing the machines, before the Aloy character were even created. Guerrilla even had a co-op mode in active development, which was shown in the first game's documentary.

And the same goes for Naughty Dog, I can't remember how many times I saw or read about someone from the studio saying that they were big fans of multiplayer games (Druckmann kept posting how many wins he had in PUBG for example), how big the success of Factions mode was in the first TLOU and so on.

People can't deny how cool it can be to play an online game with your friends, something that I'm sure happens a lot within these studios, which makes the developers themselves want to create something in the genre. The problem is that nowadays there are no multiplayer games that are not live service games. It is no longer possible to create a multiplayer game where it will not receive new characters, weapons, maps, modes, etc. over time.

As I said, it has become clear that some studios that are now famous for single-player games will want to do something different from time to time. And I don't know if it's a good idea for Sony to have a studio that's unhappy because they couldn't make the game they want.

@KilloWertz
Well that’s two studios Sony have managed to mess up with the PS5.
Guerrilla since the HFW release.
And of course Naughty Dog, it will probably be 7 years for a new game on the PS5 from them.
If this new Guerrilla games under achieves, then let’s hope they have learnt their lesson.
Even games wise Microsoft with Xbox studios looking at this year and to some point last year, have learnt some lessons.

The fact that my next Horizon experience will be an NCSoft game played on PC with an Xbox controller is a huge bummer. I hate you Jim Ryan

@OldGamer999 Considering Guerilla themselves were sick of Killzone over a decade ago, good luck with that.

To bad nothing about killzone. Was a great game. Istll...

I believe the next Horizon game, similar to Forbidden West, will be a launch title for the PS6. If this new online game wasn’t in development, I don’t think the next main Horizon entry would release until the next generation anyway.

There are also rumours suggesting Sony is working on a very powerful console, and if the handheld PS6 does come with a docking station (as some leaks claim), then the PS6 could work like the Xbox Series X, while the handheld would be closer to the Series S.

Because of that, I’m fairly confident Sony will hold back major titles like Horizon and Kojima’s next game for the next generation, to showcase the PS6 at maximum quality.

Fun fact: both games are being developed using the Decima engine.

The first Horizon gameplay trailer was one of the most exciting things I had ever seen. And the first game met all my expectations.

Then Horizon 2 came and it was 'fine' but a bloated mess. They had mechanical post-apocalyptic dinosaurs so why the hell would they drag aliens into it?

Then came the spin-offs and it had the same effect as Breath of the Wild / Final Fantasy 7 / Star Wars / Marvel
Over-exposure just destroyed all the magic.
Not sure I'll even play the next game now.

I guess the best outcome is if this thing flops real quick so they don't spend time adding extra content after release and they can get straight on Horizon 3.

@KillerBoy i get the joke , but this looks more like monster hunter then overwatch concord

@twitchtvpat yeah that’s vs killzone but who’s to say a new ip wouldn’t outsell the entirety of horizon?

What the F is this? What is this bland artwork ?? OMG. It could be a MH like experience but with everything horizon has... What a disgrace...

Horizon is the perfect vehicle for a coop game. But this isn't Horizon. It's anime-cartoon for the Fortnite generation. It potentially opens the game to a new audience, but I'm unconvinced the style will appeal to existing fans.

@deezcronuts I'm a huge fan of Horizon. Since I played the first game I always thought it would be fun to hunt with friends online. Well the idea of this new game sounded perfect at first glance but looking at the art style they choose, which certainly reminds me of Fortnite too, I'm turned off. It won't feel like Horizon. It will just carry the name.

@Th3solution Yeah, man. I'm discovering new games every time I finish one. And some great indy titles to boot. I've always not cared for the hoopla surrounding indys but there are some gems out there.

I've never been one to fan out over any particular studio. I like games from all the Sony studios, but if they're not releasing anything I don't care. They're not the only ones who make great PS games. Like, I happened upon Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden just because I was looking for something similar to Echoes of The End. Banishers is now one of my top 10 games all time. So yeah, there are so many great games out there that go unplayed because everyone is waiting for the heavy hitters to drop something.

In truth, the PS+ library alone can hold you over. For 2026, I've made the resolution to not buy any game more than $30. I luckily found Astro Bot online for that price. Game is so good that my wife plays it with me. I don't think she's played a video game in 25 years lol.

I think they should have used the characters already in the universe they built iup in the story, not these characters.

It looks alright but eve nthen to me I think the other one looks better, not because of artstyle but just general moveset or other charm that this one feels too different.
I don't like the Ratchet mobile game either. I think it lacks details that make the series good.

Both these Horizon/Ratchet mobile games just look off to me in gameplay and artstyles are 'fine' but they lack the charm of the IPs.

The more closer in artstyle Horizon game has more of the charm of the series not just because of it's artstyle.

I care about structural things and if they are off I'll point them out. I have respect for Horizon but am not a Horizon fan really. I think it's an IP that can be used in many ways but these aren't ways I'd want to see it go.

@OldGamer999 Yeah, it's amazing that Naughty Dog still hasn't released a new game on the PS5. Yes, we know that they have a game finally coming next year, but for them to take nearly 7 years into a console's life cycle to finally release a new game is insane.

As successful as several of their first party studios have been over the generations, it's surprising that most of them can only make 1 game at a time.

Horizon 3 should've been the priority after they were done collaborating on the other 2 Horizon games that came out. I had no problem with those diversions, especially since they weren't doing all the work on them anyways, which would've kept Horizon 3 on course. If this article is true and it is going to take several more years still that is.

@twitchtvpat True, this is just speculation from somebody outside of the company, so maybe things aren't quite as bad. Still, if he actually is right, that is inexcusable that Horizon 3 could still be years away only because PlayStation wanted a pointless multiplayer game. They should've had some other studio make it, as Horizon 3 should've been the main focus for Guerrilla after they helped out on Call of the Mountain and Lego Horizon, two deviations I have no problem with since they only collaborated on them.

I also just noticed after skimming through the article again... The next game is not Horizon 6...

@nolifebr So it was a coincidence that ALL major studios started work on live-service games around the time Jim Ryan became CEO in 2018-2019?
Sorry but I don’t buy that every major studio at Sony has a cancelled or flopped live service project because the studios themselves decided to try and fail in doing games very different from their existing expertise.

Take TLOU Factions as an example, Naughty Dog had developed several multiplayer projects before but they were expected to have a game with a roadmap for months, a battle pass and all of those live service BS, they just couldn’t deliver and in the process proved that studios can’t really be both, you either develop and maintain one live service game every decade or develop 3 brand new games, rather than launching a simple factions multiplayer mode as in the first game they canned the whole thing losing 4 years of active development.

I’m sure every studio has single-player and multiplayer ideas, but they were very clearly instructed which ideas to pursue or prioritize, it’s the same thing I’ve been saying since this live service push became public in 2021, all these resources, mainly time and money, were actively being taken away from the single-player projects, I remember right here in this site I was called a hater for saying that and people insisted that the live service push was completely independent from the single-player games output, and well, it’s obvious now that wasn’t the case, some people have been excusing this live service push for +5 years and still don’t want to admit it was a disastrous idea by Sony, because again, this push was made by Sony, not all studios collectively and coincidentally agreeing on making these games.

@AhmadSumadi I’ve had my eye on Banishers. A lot of people really love it. Maybe I should move it up the list. Ditto for Astro Bot.

Like you, I’m trying to limit my spending since I have a treasure trove on PS+ and also several that I’ve purchased and not yet had time to play. I do try to wait for sales also, but will splurge a couple times a year for something full price. It’s usually for a game that I feel an extra desire to support the developer, or for a game I simply can’t wait to play. The last game I payed full price was Expedition 33 when I bought it at launch and silly me thought I really should support this little indie game from this little struggling studio. 😂 Welp, it didn’t need my support and did perfectly fine on its own. And I haven’t even had time to play it yet!

They have in fact expanded the brand, sure, but 3 of the last 4…no one asked for em! Just give us Part 3 and move on to a new property!

@IOI - As I said, studios were probably encouraged to make live service games. Bigger budgets, easier to get a green light and so on.

If it were mandatory, even Santa Monica would have come up with one. Ghost Of Yotei would have been a multiplayer/coop game, Nauthty Dog and Insomniac would have been forced to release their (now cancelled) games and etc.

I guess Sony has wanted to have a big hit in the vein of Fortnite and Call Of Duty for a while. Microsoft buying half of the industry must have accelerated that by about 150%. And with more than half of the money they make coming from microtransactions that they still don't get 100% from the sale, I doubt they'll stop trying.