Sony’s latest live-service misfire is a ‘reboot’ for Horizon Hunters Gathering following ‘poor feedback’ in play tests
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PlayStation’s upcoming live-service title in the Horizon franchise, Horizon Hunters Gathering, is reportedly being rebooted after less-than-stellar play tests.
Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reports that Guerrilla Games “has been working to reboot the game since June” and the game is not canceled quite yet, but the clock is ticking with the studio reportedly having “through December to impress executives with their next milestone.”
“Following poor feedback in private testing earlier this year, the plan now is to strip out the live-service component and turn it into more of a traditional cooperative multiplayer game with a story mode and a far smaller scope,” Schreier said in today’s report.
The Monster Hunter-like game with a questionably cartoonish art style set in the Horizon universe was first announced in February of this year, and I kind of dug the loose idea of it. But with play tests showing that there’s more work to be done, with a lot of the blame seemingly on the live-service aspects of it, it seems like it won’t be releasing any time soon, if ever.
PlayStation’s big bets on live-service in the PS5 generation has bore barely any fruit, other than Helldivers 2 and yearly releases like MLB The Show. Along with the colossal failure of Concord, the publisher has also reportedly canceled live-service spin-offs for The Last of Us, God of War, and even Marvel’s Spider-Man.
The company has also ended live updates for Destiny 2 while laying off hundreds of devs, and Bungie’s other game Marathon has struggled to retain players or garner a big audience, leaving question marks abound at one of gaming’s most storied studios.
Most frustratingly about this Horizon news is that, according to Schreier, “almost all of Guerrilla Games has been working on Horizon Hunters Gathering for the last few years, and the next mainline single-player Horizon game is still far, far away.”
The post Sony’s latest live-service misfire is a ‘reboot’ for Horizon Hunters Gathering following ‘poor feedback’ in play tests appeared first on Destructoid.