Unsurprisingly, Guerrilla Games’ “Horizon: Forbidden West” is being delayed to 2022 according to multiple reports.
GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb initially reported that a September PlayStation Direct presentation was expected to announce the delay of the game until the first quarter of 2022.
Now, Bloomberg reports that the delay is official according to “a person familiar with the matter”. The previous title “Horizon: Zero Dawn” arrived in 2017, making this the biggest gap between Guerrilla Games titles to date.
Previously the game had been loosely scheduled for this holiday season so the push isn’t very far and fairly common for the industry. This year in particular has seen a combination of workflow changes brought on by the pandemic to numerous scandals about game developer workplace conditions impacting multiple late 2021 titles all being delayed until 2022.
The move means PlayStation – after some strong early performers with “Spider-Man: Miles Morales,” “Demon’s Souls,” “Returnal” and “Ratchet and Clank” – won’t have a big exclusive for the Fall/Holiday season beyond the timed console exclusive “Deathloop”.
Rival Microsoft on the other hand is expected to have new entries from two of its three biggest exclusive franchises – “Forza Horizon 5” and “Halo Infinite”.
Despite the dearth of titles, both new consoles are scoring record sales with the PS5 selling through 10 million units to date, while both the Xbox Series X & S combined have reportedly sold between 6-7 million units. All are easily outpacing the previous generation despite the difficulty in obtaining them.
2022 is looking to be a monster on the gaming front with “Horizon Forbidden West,” “God of War: Ragnarok,” “Ghostwire Tokyo,” “Stray,” “Forspoken” and “Gran Turismo 7” for PlayStation, “Starfield” and the “Hellblade” sequel for Xbox, the “Breath of the Wild” sequel for Nintendo, and third party titles like “Elden Ring,” “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League,” “Gotham Knights,” “Two Point Campus,” “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction,” “The Lord of the Rings: Gollum,” “The Callisto Protocol,” “STALKER 2,” “Hogwarts Legacy,” “Homeworld 3,” “Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands” and remakes of “Dead Space” and “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”.
