PlayStation PlayStation is rebooting Horizon Hunters Gathering after negative playtest feedback ?

[cm2]

According to Schreier:

https://bsky.app/profile/did%3Aplc%3A2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp%2Fpost%2F3mtgq4rrs5c2g

New plan is smaller scope, more traditional co-op multiplayer, no more live service.

The game is not yet canceled, but the studio told staff in a meeting on Wednesday that they will have through December to impress executives with their next milestone, the people said. Many of the developers on Horizon Hunters Gathering will be reassigned to a different project that will also be evaluated at the end of the year.

PlayStation has canceled live-service projects in franchises including God of War, Spider-Man and The Last of Us. The failed efforts have burned through hundreds of millions of dollars and years of development time, according to people familiar with the matter. In 2022, the company spent $3.6 billion to acquire Destiny developer Bungie in an effort to help improve its live-service portfolio. But that acquisition has also struggled. This year, Bungie released the new game Marathon to underwhelming sales, put an end to Destiny 2 content and laid off hundreds of staff.

Guerrilla found significant critical and commercial success in 2017 with Horizon Zero Dawn, a single-player action game set in a post-apocalyptic North America. A sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, came out in 2022 and ended with a cliffhanger that left fans eager for the next game.

But the majority of Guerrilla staff then moved to Horizon Hunters Gathering, a drastic departure from their previous titles both in gameplay and art style. A tiny team has been plotting out the next single-player Horizon game but it remains years away from completion, according to the people familiar with the studio's plans.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

And we could have gotten a new offline mainline game by now if they had just focused on that instead.