A new job listing seems to hint at a certain Horizon game arriving as soon as next year.
As we reported last September, Jason Schreier revealed in a podcast that Guerrilla Games’ next project is the live service Horizon Online game. Schreier then pointed out that this project managed to survive the cutting block, when live service games in the Spider-Man, The Last Of Us, and Twisted Metal franchises all got cut.
Schreier also hinted that a lot of people were working on this game, so it’s likely that Guerrilla is getting at least some of that work outsourced, if not with other Sony studios, then with the usual freelance game studios that Sony hires. It’s easy to see that this game would get preferential treatment, since Guerrilla Games’ former boss, Hermen Hulst, rose the ranks to become Sony Interactive Entertainment’s CEO for the Studio Business Group.
If the rumors are true, Hulst also used that position to decide to invest heavily in Concord, a decision that did not land the way Sony and Firewalk Studios expected it to. The last time we checked, Hulst is still CEO, so they are likely still moving forward with his plans for the immediate and short-term future.
As reported by Insider Gaming, a new job opening at Guerrilla Games seems to have shared more information to the public than we should usually expect. Guerrilla is looking for a Release QA Intern, and the description says that applicants need to be “available for an internship during the first half of 2025.”
The listing also says that applicants will earn experience in “ensuring a game is prepared for launch”. While it is possible that Guerrilla is helping other PlayStation Studios with other games, it isn’t likely that they will bring out a job listing to help with those games. In such situations, the studio making the game is more likely to outsource with their peers who are ready to take on the work already, meaning they already have the staff who can do the work.
So it’s most likely that this game that Guerrilla Games is hiring up for is that Horizon Online game. After Helldivers 2 and Concord, and potentially before Fairgame$ and Marathon, the pressure is on Guerrilla to make this title a resounding success.
Selling better and getting more players than Concord is a low bar, and definitely not what Sony is looking for. We know now that Sony can’t justify making single player games like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, because they cost too much to make in proportion to the number of PlayStation 5 gamers who actually bought it. Most PlayStation gamers are not hardcore fans like you see online.
Most of them bought the console simply because it’s the more prominent one between them and the Xbox, and they’re using it to play games like Fortnite and Minecraft, games they could have played on their phones, and which have siphoned revenue away from newer games.
Sony now hopes to make a game like that, because Microsoft already has games like that. Maybe Aloy really does have enough of a fanbase to make this idea all work. That will make next year the time for reckoning if that really is the case.
