Sony has had a very mixed year when it comes to live-service games, but even so Guerilla’s next game will reportedly be Horizon Online, not Horizon 3.
A couple of years ago, Sony announced its intention to release 10 live-service games by the time 2026 rolls around, a plan that will have only pleased money men and people that think they can play more than one live-service game at a time (they can’t they suck up too much of your time). Then last year, Sony delayed a bunch of them, with The Last of Us’ much troubled online spin-off getting canned only a month after that. This year, Sony actually found some success with Helldivers 2, monumental success in fact… only to then have Concord flop harder than any other AAA game has in a very long time. And yet, according to Jason Schreier, known for his reliability when it comes to behind the scenes goings-ons, has claimed that Guerilla Games will be releasing Horizon Online next as opposed to a single-player third entry.
Speaking on the Spawncast podcast, host Spawn Wave shared his hesitation towards a Horizon multiplayer title, noting how Forbidden West didn’t seem to have the “sales velocity that Zero Dawn did,” and wondering whether people even want an entirely online game, with Schreier than sharing that “Horizon Online is their next product, not whatever the third single-player game looks like. So, that one might be a ways off.”
Schreier continued to explain, “PlayStation’s live-service initiative was no joke, it’s live-service games all around, and Horizon is one of the few ones that hasn’t been cancelled or hasn’t come out and flopped like Concord did. A lot of questions there, but a lot of people are working on that online project.”
Guerilla confirmed its online Horizon spin-off back in 2022, alongside its next single-player game, but we haven’t really heard all that much about it since then. Sony clearly isn’t completely abandoning single-player titles, given that it just announced Ghost of Yotei, and there is that Horizon Zero Dawn remaster too, but you can’t help but wonder if this live-service push is something of a death knell.
