A new report suggests that Sony may be abandoning another long-planned live service project as it attempts to reposition Horizon Hunters Gathering as a smaller scope, traditional co-op multiplayer game after negative player feedback during testing.
Horizon Hunters Gathering May be Rebooted Following Negative Player Feedback
The Horizon franchise has been a critical success for Sony so far and it’s clear that there’s a desire to get as much value out of the IP as possible. Although the recent LEGO spin on Horizon was not a huge hit with fans of LEGO games or Horizon games, there has still been the upcoming Horizon Hunters Gathering project to look forward to.
Unfortunately, it sounds like lots of negative player feedback during early closed testing may be causing the game to reboot its identity. A new Bloomberg report from Jason Schreier paints a grim picture for the game and seems to foreshadow another abandoned live service attempt by a Sony studio.
According to the report the team at Guerrilla Games has been working to reboot the title since June. Apparently, the work involves stripping all of the live service elements out of the title and reducing the scope so that it is a more traditional co-op multiplayer game built around a focused story mode.
At this point, the game has not been cancelled, but it sounds like that could still be a possibility. The reports suggests that the team has until December to “impress executives with their next milestone.”
It sounds like many of the developers on the original team have also been reassigned to a different project, leaving behind a much smaller team to focus on this new version of Horizon Gunters Gathering.
Although it wasn’t included in the Bloomberg report, Schreier also indicated on social media that the next mainline Horizon single-player game is still far, far away since the vast majority of the Guerilla Games team had been working on Hunters Gathering up until early this summer.
As Sony continues to try and course correct after mulitple multiplayer focused projects have failed to come together or develop a large enough playerbase, it will be very interesting to see if the company is able to get back on track and continue delivering the single-player narrative experiences that have helped define its biggest franchises.
Be sure to check back soon for lots more news and updates on what is next for the Horizon franchise.
Horizon Hunters Gathering is still listed as coming soon to PS5 and PC, but does not have a specific release date at this time.
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