Horizon Forbidden West Reportedly Delayed to 2022

For anyone that was looking forward to continuing Aloy’s journey this year, it looks like you’ll have to wait a little bit longer. According to a source with knowledge on the game that spoke to Bloomberg, Sony has delayed Horizon Forbidden West to the first quarter of 2022. Sony has yet to officially announce the delay themselves.

This delay doesn’t come as that big of a surprise. Earlier this summer in June, Head of PlayStation Studios, Herman Hulst, stated that while the team was aiming to release the game this holiday season, a delay was possible due to the impacts of Covid restrictions on development of the game. Specifically when it comes to the difficulty of accessing performance capture and actors, Horizon Forbidden West was greatly impacted due to the game’s strong focus on story. Hulst made it very clear though that the need to put a game out wouldn’t come at the expense of the development team’s health, or the quality of the game.

“With these things, something’s gotta give. It cannot be the quality of our titles, and it surely won’t be the health or the wellbeing of our amazing team.”

We last saw Horizon Forbidden West at the end of May in a State of Play that revealed our first look at gameplay for the highly anticipated sequel. While this delay is sure to be disappointing for many, it’s more than welcome in order for the game to be as great as we all want it to be, while also making sure the developers at Guerrilla Games are being properly taken care of. Sure, this may mean it will be a quiet holiday season for PlayStation this year, but next year is certainly looking to be a big one for the company with Gran Turismo 7 and the next God of War also set to release in 2022 as well. And although they face stiff competition this year from Microsoft in the form of Halo Infinite and the increasing value of Xbox Game Pass, PS5 sales will certainly continue to rise at a great pace considering they just passed 10 million units sold worldwide and continue to outpace the sales of the PS4.