Horizon online game is reportedly coming before third entry

The Horizon series is seemingly everywhere right now, with Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered and Lego Horizon Adventures on the way, and there’s more in the pipeline beyond just the expected third entry in the main series. Bloomberg video game reporter Jason Schreier reports that the next franchise game won’t be that third game, but rather an online project that “a lot of people” are working on.

“Horizon online is their next project not whatever the third single-player game looks like, so that one might be a ways off,” Schreier said on the Spawn Wave podcast over the weekend. The conversation starts at around 54:27.

PlayStation has been leaning into live-service titles over the past few years that has resulted in some hits, like Arrowhead Game Studios’ Helldivers 2, but also extreme misses like Concord, which was taken offline two weeks after launch following poor sales performance. Combined with the recent layoffs and restructuring at Bungie, which had to dedicate more resources to upcoming extraction shooter Marathon and reconfigure its Destiny 2 release strategy, and a live-service scene that makes it impossible to break through if you aren’t Fortnite or Call of Duty, and there are a lot of questions around whether a Horizon online game is a strong investment.

“Guerrilla is an interesting place, because they’re working on this Horizon online game that — I’m not sure how many people want that,” Schreier said. “They’ve got this remaster coming and the Lego game coming … 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? There are a lot of questions around their strategy and around that online game that I certainly have.”

Other live-service titles for Sony include Haven Studios’ Fairgame$, which is still in development, but also the cancellation of The Last of Us Online. Schreier said the Horizon project is one of the few that hasn’t been canceled.