Former Sony Exec On The One PlayStation Game He Was Surprised Didn't Sell Like He Thought It Would

The Horizon franchise is forced and astroturfed.

Didn’t help it came out the same week as Elden Ring

Does this mean we won't get the finale?
I'm pretty invested in the story at this point...

Spoiler alert for Sony but they tried to make the game cinematic without any care for interesting characters, story, storytelling. The game found any excuse to make the playable character have trivial conversations with anyone for a long time. Not that a video game being cinematic would necessarily ensure it would sell well and it can be turned into a franchise that any of its game would sell like cheese and eggs, however for some reason Sony believes "every gamer want cinematic games" but in reality only some people don't get bored of cinematic games. The first game failed to be a fun game, but was popular for anyone who wanna play as a woman character in a particular setting by being okay with generic gameplay as it didn't give any reason for why people would wanna play 2nd game when 1st game didn't offer new and fun gameplay nor a decent story to experience as 2nd game is pretty much an unwanted copy paste. Bad video game companies see the potential in their games but they don't care to make it fun because they wanna divide all the ideas of features across many games in the franchise to avoid being stuck in running out of ideas and increasing cost that prevent company from making profit, however this ironically cannot prevent games from being dull and when the dull game fail to sell well all the potential of the series dies with it by company losing money a lot due to failed sells as then company thinks "people don't want this franchise so let's kill it" when they can use its potential fully to rebound. This franchise could be something significant but Sony chose to make it dull and therefore trivial to spend money on. I never bought smokes in my life but instead of paying for this series I would rather buy smokes because I know I can find an use for the smokes but not any games in this series despite I watched all episodes of MacGyver lol. Companies shouldn't make people proud to not spend money on them, they should make people ashamed of not spending money on them. But Sony is in notion of "we are golden boy, no matter what people will buy our $hit", Ubisoft does the same BS too. Ubisoft believes finally making AC game set in asia will ensure profit. But they missed the train. They killed AC by enforcing Japanese video game logic that basically killed the identity of the series instead of improving it. I don't want supernatural skills and level grinding just to beat an enemy that's actually the most basic enemy but it has higher level advantage than me. It ain't Pokemon. It ain't Final Fantasy. For companies it's hard to establish customer base but very easy to lose all past and future customers. No wonder I ignore Sony since Playstation 2 and Ubisoft since AC Syndicate. Sony is run like it's grocery shop as clearly no business wisdom in any decision they made as most of their basic decisions that's still valid in their company is business suicide. If they didn't make money from other industries for a long time they would go bankrupt around Playstation 4 era lol.

Actually Sony is not a gamer company *shocked scream SFX* as they are just a traditional electronic goods manufacturers so they never knew what gamers want, they see a modern market for electronics and they jump on it. In Playstation 1 they made a gamble on how 3D would be attractive and on Playstation 2 they made a gamble on all the experimental video games that beget the most legendary games that next generations cannot even dream to become despite technological freedom but Sony itself mostly developed copy paste action games to gain the hearts of Americans, as since Playstation 3 they only gamble on graphics like it matters to all gamers: It does not. Video game industry is not limited by technology anymore and it cannot run out of ideas. The only limitation developers have is greed and vision. And then they blame "but people have no interest in this but they want that because it's who they are", but did society know they would want Resident Evil 1 despite it's boring and has bad camera angles? Did society ignored all the different video games on Playstation 2? Did we want Metal Gear to like it? Were we fan of 100+ recruitable NPCs before playing Radiata Stories? Were we ready for beat 'em up survival game before we played God Hands? Were we ready to even detailly control how our characters sits and close doors before we played Fahrenheit?

I hate to say this but after SEGA that was a company released video game consoles before only video game console company that gives gamers what they want is Nintendo despite Nintendo is not decent enough as they are better among the worst. At least Nintendo understand what's a game, what's gamer, why parents would buy their kids video game console and why they would bother buying expensive video games to kids instead of just throwing football at them, but most importantly Nintendo can comprehend you cannot change the formula of the games dilly-dally and you have to keep significantly improving the games in the series or you'll lose customers permanently, however Sony gambles on people who don't exist as their target audience is non-existed individuals who would spend lots of money for their kids so their kids can experience cinematic non-childish programs as the games lacks a decent gameplay as they are not even a game, Sony only wanna gamble on adults who would buy their game and play it after 9-5 grind for the day, but their games are mostly fantastical but still game-version of basically what adult does in their daily life. In daily life you have long conversations, you walk, deal with zombies, hunt monsters, hide from people you don't wanna talk, et cetera. :DDD

For this reason Sony wanna put elements into games that adults hate to do in real life so they expect it's okay to do it in game. Half of my day is spent having conversations, do you think I wanna talk with NPCs? At least 5 hours of my day spent walking, do you think I wanna walk on games? People can behave like a zombie so I have to mentally murder them by dodging their BS and giving them what they want that I can sacrifice, so do you think I wanna mindlessly kill stuff? Most of my day spent watching something, do you think I wanna focus my whole tired gaze on watching BS on screen?

Then Sony may be content how much they earn, but they can earn more if they had get their $hit together lol. Then Sony believes "it's who society is so we should give them their own medicine" and the result of their "wisdom" is Concord. Seeing "popularity" among new generation kids from a loud minority of 1% of society Sony believe "this is what you want but why it didn't sell well" -- no wonder bruh. Sony ignores basics of business from price to target audience and fails to comprehend what's the industry they try to survive. I understand Sony is scared to compete with Nintendo for both cannot piss under the same tree, yet Sony can do what Nintendon't but all Sony can do is trying to piss like Nintendo but on to different tree when Sony can shit on the whole jungle and make profit of it (what an analogy!!!). :DDD

That's because Horizon Zero Dawn suffers the same issue as Killzone. A unique and beautiful world that triumphs over all video game franchises when it comes to visuals in the US. Boring, predictable, cookie cutter, cut and dry, monotonous, repetitive, and utterly dull characters andd writing. It's one of those famous pieces of American media where they used the art to sell the story because they forgot to make one.

I’ve never found the Horizon games to be the amazing games some people swear they are. I’ve never understood the love for them, and I’ve never met anyone who actually cares for the games the way that people on the internet do. They’re certainly not bad games, but they’re more like a 7/10, to me.

Did this game not launch same day as Elden Ring? Ffs….. what did they expect?

It felt to me.. at least. When the first Horizon game that came out 8th gen was just wonderful, while not unique it had a interesting take on a certain open world game, action game, etc using a rock paper scissor like elemental combat, various melee, and shields. Again, while not new, still a great take.

But with Horizon West - still an amazing game, with a story that worked very well enough. Both long, and the VR was good also.

But by the time Horizon West came out, there was a couple dozen games very similar to it. It just did not feel exciting and new. I enjoyed it, though, great production value and solid combat.

Anecdotal, but I've yet to meet a single person who cares about this franchise. Some try to defend it meekly, but you can tell even they don't really care that much about it. So I have no clue how the first game sold that many units. PS4 console bundle, maybe?