After two successful single-player adventures in the Horizon series, it seems that Sony is now taking a slightly different approach to Aloy and her adventures going forward. For one thing, Horizon: Zero Dawn Remastered is coming at the end of next month, followed by Lego Horizon Adventures in November rather than getting Horizon 3.
After that, many are probably hoping for Horizon 3, but that doesn’t seem to be the case according to Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier who recently appeared on the Spawn Wave podcast. Instead, he says that Sony is serious about its live service strategy and that Horizon 3 could be a long way off, pointing out that the risk is that Sony is now in danger of wiping out interest in the series with games that fans may not want:
“Guerrilla Games is in an interesting place because they’re working on this Horizon Online game that I’m not sure how many people want that, and so they’ve got this remaster coming and then the LEGO game coming. Part of me feels like, I wonder what happens if neither of those hit, and it turns out there isn’t a ton of interest in Horizon anymore? Are they still gonna be doing the online game? I don’t know. There are a lot of questions around their strategy and around that online game that I certainly have.
Horizon Online is their next project, not whatever the third single player game looks like, so that one might be a ways off. Sony’s PlayStation’s live service initiative was no joke. Everybody was like, it’s live service games all around, and Horizon is one of the few that hasn’t been canceled or hasn’t come out and flopped the way Concord did. So yeah, a lot of questions there, but a lot of people are working on that online project.”
How do you feel? Is it right to focus on remasters, Lego adventures and live service while premium single-player gets the short end of the stick – or is this the right approach on Sony’s part?
Thanks, Wccftech.