Last week, Guerrilla Games revealed the multiplayer game it’s been working on. The project is called Horizon Hunters Gathering and it’s a tactical co-op action game that looks like someone repainted the Horizon universe with a Fortnite brush. It’s the third Horizon game that’s been announced since Horizon Forbidden West released and fans are beginning to wonder what’s going on with the next mainline sequel in the open-world RPG series. Sources tell Kotaku it’s still a ways off and not the studio’s top focus right now.
While Horizon Hunters Gathering might seem like just another side-project, it’s actually the main game many at the Dutch studio are working on right now, two sources familiar with the state of the franchise told us. According to one source, many of the staff working on Horizon Zero Dawn 3 were pulled over to help with Horizon Hunters Gathering, which Sony is committed to making a multiplayer success. Another source suggested fans might not see the next true Aloy adventure for three to five years, which would make it a PlayStation 6 game, though it could still appear on PS5 as a cross-gen release.
This lines up with similar reporting by Bloomberg‘s Jason Schreier, who wrote last week that he believed most of Guerrilla was working on Horizon Hunters Gathering and the launch of HZD3 was not close. “We have full confidence in our new leadership as they steer Guerrilla towards a bright future, expanding the world of Horizon with Aloy’s next adventure and our exciting online project,” the studio announced amid an executive reshuffle back in 2023. Sony didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
2022’s Horizon Forbidden West was one of the early blockbuster exclusives to kick-off the PS5 console-generation, but rather than rush out a sequel, Sony has been focused on building the sci-fi games out into a larger transmedia brand. When a Netflix TV series adaptation crumbled, Sony pivoted to a feature-length movie. Horizon now has VR and Lego spin-offs with a Monster Hunter-style MMO from Guild Wars publisher NCSoft also in the works.
Horizon Hunters Gathering is the latest milestone in that initiative and one that has some fans worrying about Horizon burnout. It marries Sony’s goal of expanding the Horizon universe with its ongoing and fraught investment in live service gaming. It’s also a reminder of how dramatically the cadence of new Sony first-party blockbuster sequels has slowed in the PS5 era due to longer development times and new priorities.
One source said Horizon Hunters Gathering plays very well and is a lot of fun, but it’ll have a lot to prove. It’s coming amid a growing backlash to live service games in general and as diehard Horizon fans are hungry for Aloy’s next big single-player adventure instead.
