4 years ago
Horizon Zero Dawn is an action role-playing game developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was released for the PlayStation 4 in early 2017. The plot follows Aloy, a hunter in a world overrun by machines, who sets out to uncover her past. The player uses ranged weapons, a spear, and stealth to combat mechanical creatures and other enemy forces. A skill tree provides the player with new abilities and bonuses. The player can explore the open world to discover locations and take on side quests.
Horizon Zero Dawn is a game about a woman who beats up robot dinosaurs for some reason. Something like that, anyway—I don't really know, because it's a PlayStation 4 exclusive, and I'm not working for PS4 Gamer here. That may soon be about to change, though. Not my job situation (I hope), but the PS4-exclusivity: According to a Kotaku report, it's coming to PC later this year.
Console exclusives being ported to PC isn't all that terribly unusual, but this case is a little different than most because Horizon Zero Dawn developer Guerrilla Games is owned by Sony. Big PS4 exclusives like Quantic Dreams' Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human have made their way to PC, and Death Stranding is coming, but as Kotaku points out Horizon Zero Dawn would be the first major exclusive from a Sony-owned studio to be released for PC.
This isn't the first time someone has suggested that Horizon Zero Dawn is coming to PC. GamesRadar reported in December 2019 year that YouTuber Anton Logvinov, who accurately predicted that Death Stranding would be released for PC, said that Horizon Zero Dawn would be released for PC in February of this year. Admittedly, the Death Stranding call wasn't exactly a great insight, and February is just a couple of weeks away, which doesn't leave much time for Sony to get its proverbial ducks in a row. But it does lend some added credibility to the Kotaku report—and Kotaku has a pretty good record on this kind of thing in its own right.
If Horizon Zero Dawn does come to PC, it will mark a major change in direction for Sony, which has historically relied on exclusives to move consoles and build its user base. Microsoft has embraced the PC for awhile now, but that's more of a natural fit, since Microsoft also makes, among other things, Windows. Sony has less incentive to make that shift, so doing so would signal a real change in strategy going forward.
For most publishers, the release of a game on PC would be no big deal. Most video game companies try to put their software on as many platforms as possible. But for Sony, this is a remarkable move. Since the launch of the PlayStation 1 in 1994, just about every game funded and developed by Sony has been exclusive to a PlayStation platform. (Sony’s PC-focused massively multiplayer online games, including EverQuest, are the main exception.) Sony’s strategy has always been to drive hardware sales with software and vice versa. One would expect them to take the same approach with future games on the PlayStation 5, which will launch this fall.
But, as analyst Mat Piscatella has smartly pointed out, the future of video games lies in ecosystems, not platforms. Sony’s biggest competitor, Microsoft, has been more upfront about its platform-agnostic strategy, with Xbox boss Phil Spencer talking frequently about wanting to get their games in as many hands as possible. For the past couple of years, Microsoft has released all of its Xbox games on PC as well. Will Sony follow suit with its own slate of PlayStation exclusives? This upcoming PC port of Horizon may be a telling sign.
