Longtime PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida retired from the company on January 15, and as part of his departure, he sat down for a lengthy interview to discuss a range of topics pertaining to his time at the gaming giant. One story that stood out from his chat with Kinda Funny was about the one PlayStation game that didn’t sell as well as expected.
He said during interview (via Radec) that Horizon Forbidden West, a sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, was the one game he was surprised to see come up short commercially, relatively speaking.
“The one I was a bit surprised in terms of the number of units was the second Horizon game. I loved the first Horizon game and the game did well, and I was hoping the second game would do even better in terms of sales. The game was bigger and great but I don’t think the second game did as many units as the first one,” he said.
Zero Dawn launched in 2017 and had sold more than 20 million copies as of early 2022 across PlayStation and PC. In May 2023, Sony announced that the entire Horizon video game series had exceeded 32.7 million units sold, with Forbidden West selling 8.4 million. The PC editions of both games came after they originally launched on console, and Forbidden West was not yet on PC when the 8.4 million sales number was announced.
The Horizon series also expanded to virtual reality with Horizon: Call of the Mountain and to the family market with Lego Horizon Adventures. Sony is now developing a Horizon online multiplayer game, apparently.
Outside of games, a Horizon movie is now in development, following on from the cancelled TV series for Netflix.
Also during the Kinda Funny interview, Yoshida talked about why the PlayStation Vita failed and why he thinks there is no Bloodborne remaster.