Horizon Forbidden West: PC Player Base Down 50% Over Predecessor

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Abiyan

At Tech4gamers, I cover all sorts of gaming news. Whether it’s a leak of any upcoming game or an update, an announcement, or a rumour, I like to write about it all. Over the weekend, I sit and write features where I talk about games that I miss or want to see return.

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After much speculation and rumors, Sony officially announced earlier this year that Horizon Forbidden West would come to PC in March 2024. While expectations were high, this game failed to make it into the Steam best-sellers before launch, hinting at an underwhelming launch.

Unfortunately, these doubts were not misplaced since Horizon Forbidden West has launched to just 25K concurrent players.

Why it matters: With the game selling 8.4 million units and its predecessor being Sony’s best-selling PC game, this performance is astonishing, to say the least.

As seen above, the game has not seen much activity. While this concurrent player count is certainly far from bad and will continue to rise, it is a noticeable step down compared to Horizon Zero Dawn.

Back in 2020, this PlayStation exclusive launched to over 56K concurrent players on Steam. Therefore, the sequel’s player count is down by 50% despite the IP’s current popularity.

Meanwhile, other ports like The Last of Us Part 1, God of War, and Spider-Man also performed much better. All three games had a lead anywhere from 10K players to nearly 50K players.

We expected the game to make a bigger splash after Helldivers 2 broke records on PC and stayed in the Steam best-sellers after beating Palworld. However, one key distinction between them is the fact that Helldivers 2 was a day-one PC release.

Unfortunately, this has been a trend for all but Sony’s biggest PC ports, with even the likes of Uncharted receiving little fanfare. In this case, the release of Dragon’s Dogma 2 likely had an impact as well, considering this Capcom title reached nearly 200K players.

On the bright side, Horizon Forbidden West runs like a dream on PC. The game fully flexes its visual prowess, which, when combined with the brilliant art style, leads to spectacular results.

We expect PlayStation’s next PC port to deliver much better results.

Considering Ghost of Tsushima already made it to Steam’s best-sellers months before launch, it has the potential to outpace everything but Helldivers 2 in terms of launch concurrent players.

Abiyan

[News Reporter]

Abiyan is on track to complete his Computer Science bachelor’s degree. His enthusiasm for writing and gaming motivates him to keep readers and gamers updated with the latest information from the industry. In his free time, Abiyan enjoys playing Dota 2 and Rocket League. Abiyan has also been cited in reputed websites such as Kitguru, Comicbook, GamingBible, Eurogamer and Gamingbolt.