The once PlayStation exclusive, Horizon Forbidden West, has released and quite a few people have flocked to the Steam release, but more were interested in the game’s prequel at the time of its PC launch. While its first-party live service model isn’t going too well, it’s seeing warm reception to its recent PC debuts of established IPs.
SteamDB stats show the game’s all-time peak — as of writing — is 40.4K players, with a strong 14.2K currently playing. Now, are these numbers bad? No, they really aren’t, but it is a far cry from its predecessor, which capped at 56.5K, but it could frankly be due to the timing of its launch — not many PlayStation games hit PC, in fact, Horizon Zero Dawn paved the way for future PC ports. Since then, Sony has been releasing once-exclusives to PC, netting mixed reception in the process.
Frankly, Arrowhead Game Studio’s Helldivers 2 proves there is a market in the PC market that Sony can tap and most likely see success in. Its library of award-winning games and established IPs give it enough of a library to pull from that releasing PC ports of its slightly older games with better graphics seem more “viable” than just releasing them on the current-gen PS5 alone.
Forbidden West might be behind Zero Dawn, but it’s fair to say that it still has time to swing back around and be more “on-track” of what people expect.
