Financial news agency Bloomberg reports that Sony has postponed the upcoming PlayStation game Horizon Forbidden West until the first quarter of 2022. The game was initially planned for the end of 2021.
An anonymous source familiar with PlayStation’s plans confirmed the postponement to Bloomberg game journalist Jason Schreier . The coronavirus outbreak may have played a part in that delay. PlayStation Studios CEO Hermen Hulst said in June that the company was “on track” for a release around the holidays, although he stated that this was not yet 100 percent certain.
“That’s not quite certain yet, and we’re working as hard as we can to confirm that as soon as possible,” Hulst said at the time, in a blog post announcing the postponement of the upcoming God of War game. The CEO wrote at the time that the quality of the games and the health of the development teams are paramount.
The Bloomberg news follows an earlier report from noted game journalist and insider Jeff Grubb. He stated in the Giant Bomb podcast GrubbSnax that Sony would consider the postponement, Video Games Chronicle also writes . He then said that the postponement may not have been finalized yet, but that the company was leaning towards it.
However, Grubb explained this week that the postponement is “a little more certain” than he previously formulated. He said he wanted to leave open the possibility that it is not yet certain until he could “verify the specific details”. Schreier emphasizes on Twitter that the game has already been postponed “some time ago”, according to his sources.
Sony itself has not yet confirmed the postponement and is not responding to questions from Bloomberg. Jeff Grubb previously suggested a possible postponement would be announced during a PlayStation livestream in September. Earlier this year, several other PlayStation games were delayed until 2022, including God of War Ragnarok from Santa Monica Studios and Gran Turismo 7 from Polyphony Digital. Both games were initially scheduled for 2021.
Horizon Forbidden West is in development at a studio named Guerrilla Games and will be released for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. It is a sequel to the game Horizon Zero Dawn, which was well received by critics upon release in 2017. The company announced in early 2019 that more than 10 million copies of Horizon Zero Dawn have been sold. Since then, the game has also been released for PC.