The redemption of the PS5 beings with Horizon Hunters Gathering – Reader’s Feature

Horizon Hunters Gathering shot of player character all posing dramatically with weapons drawn — Horizon Hunters Gathering – will it be the last reveal for a while? (Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Following the announcement of live service game Horizon Hunters Gathering, a reader hopes that Sony will finally return to making more single-player games.

There’s been a lot of fretting over exactly how well the Nintendo Switch 2 has done recently but since I don’t own one it’s not something I’m very invested in. However, I was interested to see that the PlayStation 5 has reached 90 million sales and is pretty neck and neck with the PlayStation 4, although apparently it only did so well at Christmas because it was heavily discounted.

I thought that was strange at the time and I still haven’t heard any explanation. Now that Xbox has gone the PlayStation 5 has no direct competition anymore so you would’ve thought Sony would sit back and just let the money roll in, since they’re the only game in town now when it comes to high-end triple-A console games.

I also would’ve thought they wouldn’t want to sell off stock cheaply when the RAM shortages means they might not have enough for this year. It’s a real puzzle to me. Maybe they just wanted to snag disillusioned Xbox owners before they go off and buy a gaming PC but that doesn’t seem very likely. Or maybe they wanted to keep things on pace for the PlayStation 4, so they can justify making more single-player games.

I realise that’s a bit of a stretch but allow me to dream for a while. The thought occurred to me when Sony announced Horizon Hunters Gathering in the weirdest, most anonymous way possible. Instead of a big fanfare they dropped a blog post and video out of nowhere, like they were embarrassed of it and didn’t want to draw attention to it.

I have no real opinion of the game, other than it looks like Fortnite and I can already tell it’s not for me. (I also think Sony really overestimates how popular Horizon is as a concept. People like the main games well enough, for the graphics and cool robot animals, but I don’t think any of the spin-offs have done well and I doubt this will do any better, unless it’s free – which it probably won’t be.)

Expert, exclusive gaming analysis

Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.

Now that it’s announced I think that’s the last live service game that Sony has planned. There’s also Fairgames but that hasn’t been mentioned in ages and I think there’s a good chance it’s been quietly canned. Which if it’s true is further proof that Sony are outrighted embarrassed at how obsessed they got by these types of games.

There might be one or two others in development but they were never going to give up on them completely, and I’m fine with that. Nobody said they shouldn’t make any, they just said they shouldn’t make only that!

So at the moment we’ve got Saros and Wolverine scheduled for this year and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet for maybe next year. It’s not a lot but it’s more than we’ve had for the last few years, so I’ll take it.

What my hope is, is that this is the turning point, of Sony going back to making single-player games and redeeming the PS5 as a format. Let’s face it, they’ve wasted the whole generation but if the PlayStation 6 is going to be further off than expected then they have got time to turn it around.

Also, I go along with the theories that everything on the PlayStation 6 will be cross-gen anyway, because it’ll only be a small step up. That means anything they start making now isn’t going to be stuck on a dead format, if there even is such a thing anymore.

So there it is. That’s as close as I can get to boundless optimism at the moment. The problem is there’ll probably be no easy way to tell if I’m right or not, given how slow the wheels turn at Sony nowadays. But if there’s no more new live service games announced, or at least an equal number of single-player ones, then maybe the mistakes of the PlayStation 5 era can finally be undone.

By reader Trepsils