PlayStation's Horizon Co-Op Game Being Rebooted Following Poor Feedback

PlayStation is going back to the drawing board for Horizon Hunters Gathering. The co-op spinoff of Guerrilla Games' Horizon series was announced earlier this year, but Sony Interactive Entertainment has decided to reboot the project in response to negative player feedback.

The plan, according to a new Bloomberg report, is to strip Horizon Hunters Gathering of its live-service components. The new iteration of the game will be a more traditional co-op title on a smaller scale and will include a story mode.

The decision to reboot the project was made in June. While Horizon Hunters Gathering has not been canceled outright, Guerrilla Games reportedly told staff that they have through December to impress Sony and PlayStation executives. Furthermore, many developers working on the game will be reassigned to another project that also has the same deadline for evaluation.

Soon after Sony acquired Destiny and Marathon developer Bungie in 2022, the PlayStation maker announced a plan to launch 12 live service games by the end of Sony's 2025 fiscal year. In the years since this plan was made public, it has largely failed to come to fruition. The hero shooter Concord only lasted two weeks before being shut down and planned live-service games for God of War and The Last of Us were both canceled. The cancellation of these projects has led to multiple studio closures, including Firewalk Studios and Bluepoint Games. Bungie released Marathon earlier this year before suffering layoffs that affected "most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members."

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• Image: Guerilla Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment
• Image: Guerilla Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment
• Image: Guerilla Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment

Following the layoffs, PlayStation CEO and president Hideaki Nishino doubled down on the company's live service ambitions, saying, "We believe that live service games are content that attracts users on a global level, so we want to continue to revitalize the market through both first-party and third-party content." Nishino pointed to Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls as one of PlayStation's live service efforts. Nishino made these comments in June, which, according to the Bloomberg report, was the same time PlayStation decided to reboot Horizon Hunters Gathering as a non-live service title.

Guerrilla Games also has a small team planning the next mainline Horizon game, but it is reportedly "years away from completion."