What Could Go Wrong: PlayStation Relaunches Horizon Hunters Gathering After Negative Player Feedback - Bloomberg

Sony's ingenious strategy of pouring money into an oversaturated genre has reportedly begun to falter.

Sony has decided to significantly revise the concept of Guerrilla Games' multiplayer title Horizon Hunters Gathering. According to Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, the project is being relaunched after negative feedback received during closed testing. Instead of a large-scale game-as-a-service, the developers now intend to create a significantly more compact cooperative project with a traditional multiplayer structure and a story mode.

The relaunch of Hunters Gathering comes amidst a major re-evaluation of Sony's plans for live-service games. The company had previously aimed to significantly expand PlayStation's presence in this segment, but the strategy encountered several problems: Concord was shut down just two weeks after launch, and some other projects were canceled or significantly revised. Analysts and industry media have already noted that Sony is gradually scaling back its initial ambitions for this direction.