As many may have predicted well before its official reveal, Horizon Hunters Gathering has been met with a lot of negativity across the internet.
This is the new co-op-enabled title from Guerrilla Games; a Horizon spin-off featuring preset characters and a highly stylised art direction. It was announced last week for PS5 and PC.
To be fair to the PlayStation Studio, it did everything right with regards to the announcement's structure. It gave us a brief rundown of what its goals are for the game, and it showed plenty of gameplay footage right off the bat.
But this isn't Horizon 3, and it is part of Sony's much criticised live service push, so some kind of backlash always seemed incredibly likely to us.
At the time of writing, the official reveal trailer has 735,000 views and 20,000 likes, which isn't an especially positive ratio.
For reference, Crimson Desert's latest deep dive trailer has a comparable 600,000 views on PlayStation's channel, and it's sitting at 25,000 likes. Meanwhile, another recently announced title, GeniGods: Nezha, has managed 20,000 likes on just 460,000 views.
But then the YouTube comments are also brutal; those that lay into the project have received thousands of likes and have floated to the top of the section.
It's a similar story on places like Reddit, where gaming communities are once again questioning Sony's priorities, and are reacting rather badly to Hunters Gathering's art style.
The problem here is that you really have to trawl through all of these comments to find any genuinely positive takes, because there's an awful lot of apathy in the mix as well.
Basically, the optics aren't good, and even right here on Push Square, the negativity is noticeable.
Our own comments section on the announcement article speaks for itself, but it somehow gets worse when you look at our dedicated poll on the subject.
On the night of the reveal, we asked readers for their reaction to Horizon Hunters Gathering, and the poll results certainly aren't what the suits at Sony will want to see.
Over 4,400 votes were cast, and just 3% (three!) of our audience said they're "sold" on the game. 16% said they were "interested", another 16% said they "don't know", and then a whopping 64% of readers said they're either "not feeling it" or they're "already out".
The latter was the most popular option on the whole poll, with 42% of the votes. Jeez!
In truth, it's been quite some time since we hosted such a negative poll — especially on the topic of a PlayStation Studios title.
In fact, the only one we can think of is a poll that we ran for Concord after its launch. We asked if people were playing it, and an utterly overwhelming 81% of users said they had no interest in the ill-fated hero shooter. This is not the kind of company that Horizon Hunters Gathering will want to keep.
We've said it loads of times, but first impressions — and initial reactions — are so, so important in this industry. If a project's hit with the stench of negativity right out of the gate, then it'll always have an uphill battle on its hands.
What do you make of all this? Do you think Horizon Hunters Gathering is already under threat, or can it still turn opinions around? Take a deep breath in the comments section below.