The next Horizon game is apparently a live-service game

Sony’s Horizon series is a pretty big hit, with the two games in the series – Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West – selling over 30 million copies collectively. Sony seems to want to capitalize on its success, too, with a few upcoming games on the way, including an online live-service game, if reports are to be believed. 

Speaking on the Spawn Wave podcast over the weekend, Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier said that Guerilla Games’ next game isn’t a single-player third-person action game like Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, but instead an online live-service game. 

“Horizon Online is their next product,” Schreier says. “Not the third single-player game, looks like. So, that one may be a ways off.” 

Schreier went on to say that Sony’s rumored live-service initiative – in which the company reportedly pushed for live-service games that could be monetized over time – is “no joke,” saying that it was live-service games all around and that despite the failure of Concord and the cancelation of other projects, Horizon Online as he calls it is still kicking. 

“Horizon is one of the few ones that hasn’t been canceled or hasn’t come out and flopped the way Concord did,” Schreier claimed. “So… yeah, a lot of questions. A lot of people are working on that.” 

Schreier, a former Kotaku journalist who started writing for Bloomberg in 2020, is best known for his investigative journalism, having reported extensively on crunch within giant companies like Riot Games, Rockstar, and more. He’s also authored two books, one focused on the volatility faced by the games industry as a whole and another focused on Blizzard, set to launch next week. 

It’s not particularly surprising to hear that Guerilla would be working on a Horizon live-service game, given the profit potential and how popular the series is. Sony also seems to be going all in on Horizon lately, too, with Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered coming to PS5 and PC at the end of October and Lego Horizon Adventures coming to Switch, PC, and PS5 two weeks later.