Some big news dropped out of G-Star, Korea’s marquee game conference happening this week. NCSOFT, a publisher and developer prolific in the MMO community for games like Lineage, Throne & Liberty, Aion, Blade & Soul, and more, are teaming up with Sony’s Guerilla Games to make an MMORPG set in the Horizon universe alongside Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West.
If that wasn’t interesting enough in and of itself, the really surprising bit for me is that it’s a mobile MMO game that’s also coming to PC, but there’s no word of a PlayStation 5 version of the game whatsoever. The press release email I received didn’t even have the word PlayStation in it at all, for reference, but the trailer below does mention it’s supported by PlayStation Studios.
That means this is a PlayStation Studios game based on a Sony Interactive Entertainment studio’s property, but it isn’t coming to PlayStation—instead, Halo is. We live in unprecedented times.
Horizon Steel Frontiers Coming to Mobile and PC
To NCSOFT’s credit, Horizon Steel Frontiers looks spectacular visually. If I hadn’t read that this game was coming to mobile, I’d have assumed it was a PS5 game at first. That’s absolutely a testament to the visual fidelity on display.
Conceptually, Horizon as a universe makes a lot of sense for an MMO-type game. The world is split into various regions with different tribes and factions, as well as varying playstyles, hunting, gathering, and crafting mechanisms that should all translate very naturally. Being able to make a custom character in the Horizon universe in and of itself sounds pretty neat. After watching the entire gameplay + interview video, I get some heavy “what if Monster Hunter had robots” vibes.
Once the gameplay starts, it’s pretty clear this is a mobile game, though. I’ve played my fair share of games like Genshin Impact, Blue Protocol, and a few others that aim to replicate that AAA-like experience on mobile and the games always have a sort of artificial sheen to their presentation. Granted, for a game about humans fighting robotic dinosaurs it sort of works, so that’s not necessarily a dig at Horizon Steel Frontiers.
Horizon Steel Frontiers looks extremely fun and very beautiful, but I’m very much a console gamer these days so my personal interest tanked when I saw the targeted platforms mentioned. However, if there is a way to easily check it out on Steam Deck then I might consider giving it a try.
For what it’s worth, Guerilla Games and PlayStation are also working on a new mainline entry in the Horizon series, as well as other content, but details are still pretty light.