Update - 3:20 p.m. ET, 8/25/2021: Today during Gamescom Opening Night Live, Guerrilla Games finally confirmed that Horizon Forbidden West has been delayed until next year. It will now come out February 18, 2022, but is still coming to both PS5 and PS4.
“It’s no surprise that our teams were hugely impacted by the global pandemic. We’ve been adjusting to new workflows and all of the challenges while keeping our team safe and prioritizing a healthy work life balance,” Mathijs de Jonge, Forbidden West’s Game Director, said during the show. He also announced that the first game, Horizon Zero Dawn, is finally getting a PS5 patch to add support for 60fps and 4K checkerboarding set to go live later today.
Original story follows.
Sony has delayed Horizon Forbidden West until next year, Bloomberg reports. Originally scheduled to arrive this holiday season, the big PlayStation console exclusive will now come out sometime in the first quarter of 2022.
While game delays have been common throughout the last year thanks to the pandemic, it’s not immediately clear if that’s what’s holding up Horizon Forbidden West.
“Covid-19 has caused production challenges, forcing developers to work from home for months, but the pandemic has also provided a cover for developers to bump games that were facing obstacles regardless,” Bloomberg writes, following up on an initial rumor of the delay shared on Giant Bomb.
The sequel to Guerrilla Games’ successful PS4 open-world adventure, Horizon: Zero Dawn, it was originally revealed at last year’s Sony summer showcase for the PS5 and slated to arrive sometime this year. But just last month, PlayStation Worldwide Studios boss Hermen Hulst confirmed that wasn’t a sure bet.
“We think we are on track to release [Horizon Forbidden West] this holiday season,” Hulst said in a PlayStation Blog interview at the time. “But that isn’t quite certain yet, and we’re working as hard as we can to confirm that to you as soon as we can.”
Unlike some other upcoming Sony games, Horizon Forbidden West is supposed to come to PS4 as well, similar to last year’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
Lots of games continue to get delayed, but not all of them are PS5 exclusives. While Arkane’s Deathloop is just around the corner, Tango Gameworks announced just last week that GhostWire: Tokyo would slip to 2022. The new God of War, which everyone just calls Ragnarök because it still doesn’t have a name, was also recently delayed to 2022. Fortunately, there are still plenty of other games coming out, and since PS5s are still a pain-in-the ass to find, it continues to be true that you (still) really don’t need one yet.