When it came to choosing Decima, the most important of its aspects for Sakamoto was that it would support the technologies that Kojima Productions needed for its open-world games. Despite it being less accessible when compared with more commercial offerings, its strong runtime rendering analysis tools was a standout feature. He also noted that, while no engine tends to be the singular best choice, studios have to make their own decisions depending on their needs. For Kojima Productions, this was Decima.

“When we were considering adopting Decima, I had the opportunity to evaluate the engine directly,” Sakamoto explained. “It offered many of the capabilities needed to build an open-world game, and while some aspects are less immediately approachable than commercial engines, its runtime rendering analysis tools stood out. Being able to access such a rich set of data without relying on external tools is incredibly valuable. The development environment – built for large-scale, multi-disciplinary teams – also included features I had long hoped to implement in the engine I worked on previously. With all of that in mind, we decided to adopt Decima.”

“It has now been nearly ten years since we began using the engine. While no engine is the best choice in every scenario, Decima enables us to accomplish many things that would be difficult to achieve elsewhere.”

Further in the interview, Sakamoto also spoke about wanting artists to work directly with Decima to create their own shaders rather than only having programmers working with it. He noted that engines tend to contribute more to a game’s development than just offering a graphics pipeline. Thanks to that, just about every developer works with the engine in some way, at least indirectly.

“When people talk about game engines, attention tends to focus on the parts that relate directly to the game’s visual expression,” he explained. “But in reality, a game engine provides a wide range of functions that support every aspect of development. In that sense, the number and type of tools used may differ depending on one’s role, but I don’t think there is a single developer whose work is completely unrelated to Decima.”

Just last week, Kojima Productions had announced that Death Stranding 2: On the Beach will be coming to PC on March 19th. The announcement was made with a new trailer giving us a look at some of the game’s visuals on the platform. The studio has also confirmed that it will support uncapped frame rates for gameplay, support for DualSense features, and the ability to run at 21:9 and 32:9 aspect ratios for ultrawide displays.

For more details about Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, check out our review of its PS5 version.

According to a source speaking to Kotaku, developers were reportedly moved from Horizon 3 to “help” with Hunters Gathering. If that doesn’t sound vaguely similar to what BioWare did with the Dragon Age team for Anthem, a second source revealed that the sequel may not launch for another three to five years.

Based on rumors of the PlayStation 6’s release, allegedly scheduled for 2027 (unless plans change), it’s possible that Horizon 3 could be geared towards the same. However, this doesn’t entirely rule out a PS5 launch. That’s what happened with Horizon Forbidden West when it launched in 2022, and you have to believe Sony will repeat this process with other releases (including Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic).

In the meantime, Horizon Hunters Gathering will have a closed playtest later this month on PS5 and PC, with three Hunters available to test out. It doesn’t currently have a release date, but Guerrilla has confirmed post-launch support, including more story content.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier responded in the affirmative to a user on Bluesky who asked if this meant the sequel wouldn’t launch for a long time. Adding to this, he said, “I believe most of the studio is on this,” further reinforcing that this will be Guerrilla’s focus for some time.

That’s because the plan is to add more content, including expanding on the story post-launch. The fact that game director Arjan Bak confirmed that the narrative is fully canon further indicates that it’s fully focused on Hunters Gathering.

Despite the disappointment that’s been Sony’s live-service initiative, with multiple cancelled titles, the flop that was Concord, the missing Fairgame$, and so on, the company hasn’t indicated any desire to stop trying. After all, Helldivers 2 continues to perform well, and Bungie’s Marathon is coming up in March.

Nevertheless, Horizon Hunters Gathering has a rough road ahead, something which Guerrilla is seemingly aware of. It’s indicated a desire to build the game alongside fans, starting with a playtest later this month on PS5 and PC.

“I want to be very clear about one thing. We absolutely love making single-player games, and we’re going to keep making them,” said Van Beek, according to GamesRadar. He went on to note that, while single-player games are still “a huge part of who we are as a studio,” Guerrilla Games also has other ambitions.

“We also have this long-standing dream to try to do something different,” he explained. “Our own take on how you can explore the world of Horizon together as a team of machine hunters.”

Horizon Hunters Gathering will mark Guerrilla Games’ foray into multiplayer for the first time since its work on the Killzone franchise, the last of which was 2013’s Killzone Shadow Fall. Since then, the studio has kept itself busy with its work on the Horizon franchise, while also working with Kojima Productions so the latter could use the former’s in-house Decima game engine for Death Stranding.

The upcoming title is going to be a 3-player co-op game, with four environments being available for its various missions. The title will revolve around “runs”, and borrowing more cues from the rogue-lite genre, will allow players to power-up by acquiring Perks. Two modes have been confirmed for Horizon Hunters Gathering: Machine Incursion and Cauldron Descent.

While Machine Incursion will focus on players teaming up to take on ever-escalating waves of Machines that culminates in a boss fight, Cauldron Descent will of focus on players exploring “ever-changing rooms”, each of which offering their own unique challenges. These can range from combat encounters to platforming and even puzzle-solving.

Completing a hunt across either of the mods will allow players to improve their gear depending on the rewards they found during their excursions. The title will also offer a hub area where players can socialize and hang out.

While it doesn’t yet have a release date, Guerrilla Games has announced a closed playtest, for which players can sign up through the PlayStation Beta Program. The playtest is slated to go live towards the end of the month.

While Horizon Hunters Gathering might seem like a fun idea for a spin-off, game director Arjan Bak has confirmed that its narrative will be “fully canon” with the overall Horizon franchise.

“These Hunters have their own motivations and personal struggles, which comes together in new stories we want to tell in the world of Horizon,” he said about the playable characters. “The game has a narrative campaign which will introduce new mysteries, characters, and threats, but we’re keeping it under wraps for now. What we can say is that Hunters Gathering is fully canon and its story doesn’t stop at launch!”

“These Hunters have their own motivations and personal struggles, which comes together in new stories we want to tell in the world of Horizon,” he said about the roster of new playable characters. “The game has a narrative campaign which will introduce new mysteries, characters, and threats, but we’re keeping it under wraps for now. What we can say is that Hunters Gathering is fully canon and its story doesn’t stop at launch!”

Of course, given how Horizon Forbidden West ended, you have to wonder how much it’s really going to matter when Horizon 3 launches. Regardless, this is the second multiplayer-centric Horizon project on the way, with NCSoft also working on Horizon Steel Frontiers. Guerrilla clearly wants to expand the universe in other directions and genres, so we’ll see how things pan out.

Horizon Hunters Gathering will feature four environments at launch, with players venturing through forests, plains, and even replayable Cauldrons to take on the Machines. While you’ll team up with two other players, the key difference from the other mainline Horizon games is that they each have unique abilities and playstyles. Some are ranged; others are melee-focused, and each can be assigned a different sub-role to bolster the team.

A release date has yet to be confirmed, but Horizon Hunters Gathering will have a closed playtest by the end of February with three playable characters available.

Unlike Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, Hunters Gathering features an animated art style and focuses on other formidable hunters in the world. Up to three players can team up and venture out into four different environments, acquiring Perks in rogue-lite fashion after clearing Machine encounters.

Two modes are confirmed – Machine Incursion, a wave-based battle against Machines ending in a boss fight, and Cauldron Descent, which is longer and offers “ever-changing rooms” (including some hidden ones). Similar to other games in the series, you can precisely target Machine parts with ranged weaponry. However, there’s also melee combat, and every character can choose Tank, Damage, and Support roles ahead of runs to support the team.

Upon completing a hunt, it’s back to the titular Hunters Gathering to socialize, improve your gear, and more. Those interested in trying Horizon Hunters Gathering before launch can sign up for a future closed playtest via the PlayStation Beta Program. It goes live at the end of this month, so stay tuned for more details.

First off, if you purchased a single item, then you get access to the entire Warbond, no questions asked. Arrowhead gifted some items last year as a sort of apology for its high price, and while you’ll need to pony up 1500 Super Credits if you didn’t pay for any, those gifted items won’t require medals.

Of course, if you’re new, then you’ll still need to pay the same price and spend on the items to unlock them. But at the very least, you can look forward to additions like the Extrasolar Ash patterns for the Pelican, Hellpod, Exosuits, and more.

The Legendary Warbond arrives in the wake of a new Helldivers 2 update, which adds Magma Worlds for players to battle on. Arrowhead is also prototyping a new rogue-lite mode, but there’s no ETA on its official release (or whether it will be added to the game).

Among the actions noted in the filing are the fact that “there will be no new promotion or public testing of Light of Motiram during the pendency of the Motion for Preliminary Injunction,” and that “the Light of Motiram release will not be moved up to before Q4 2027,” as well as Tencent not being able to “seek expedited discovery in connection” with the motion.

The motion for preliminary injunction is slated to take place on December 17, with Sony’s deadline for filing its response to this motion being January 2, 2026. The main court hearing date on the motions for dismissal as well as for preliminary injunction are both slated to take place on January 29, 2026.

Sony had filed its lawsuit back in July, where it had referred to Light of Motiram as a “slavish clone” of the Horizon games. As part of this initial filing, the company had also confirmed that it was approached by Tencent for a collaboration on a new title in the franchise, but that this was ultimately declined. Sony alleges that Tencent went ahead and kicked off development of Light of Motiram. The console maker’s goal with the lawsuit is to seek monetary damages up to an unspecified amount, as well as a court order to block Tencent from violating the Horizon IP.

In response to this, Tencent had offered up its own statement, calling Sony’s lawsuit an “improper attempt to fence off a well-trodden corner of popular culture.”

“Plaintiff Sony has sued a grab-bag of Tencent companies – and ten unnamed defendants – about the unreleased video game Light of Motiram, alleging that the game copies elements from Sony’s game Horizon Zero Dawn and its spinoffs,” said Tencent about the lawsuit. “At bottom, Sony’s effort is not aimed at fighting off piracy, plagiarism, or any genuine threat to intellectual property.”

“It is an improper attempt to fence off a well-trodden corner of popular culture and declare it Sony’s exclusive domain,” the statement continued. “In Sony’s telling, Horizon Zero Dawn is ‘like no fictional world created before [or] since.’” Tencent calls this claim “startling, because it is flatly contradicted by Sony’s own developers, not to mention the long history of video games featuring the same elements that Sony seeks to monopolize through this lawsuit.”

While Tencent went ahead and referred to other popular media, including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Biomutant, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Far Cry Primal and Outer Wilds among many others that make use of similar aesthetics, Sony would fire back with its own statement weighing in at 42 pages in length, where the company would call Tencent’s lengthy statement “nonsense”.

Since the lawsuit, Tencent had also updated the Steam listing for Light of Motiram with brand new art work that removed the potential for comparison with the Horizon franchise.

When asked about the differences between Decima Engine and Unreal Engine 5, Lee praised Guerrilla Games’ technical expertise, especially when it comes to Decima’s ability to deliver “stunning graphics and amazing asset quality”. He also noted that bringing over those high quality assets to work with Unreal Engine 5 posed its own set of challenges.

“Horizon Steel Frontiers is being developed using Unreal Engine 5,” said Lee. “The original Decima engine is incredible — it delivered stunning graphics and amazing asset quality that made Horizon so iconic. Bringing those high-quality resources over to Unreal Engine 5 was no small challenge.”

As for the development of the title. Lee also spoke about collaborating with Guerrilla Games to make sure that the artistic vision of the Horizon franchise would be captured perfectly with Horizon Steel Frontiers. He also spoke about the impressive capabilities of Unreal Engine 5 to accomplish this vision.

“We worked closely with Guerrilla to make sure we preserved the visual fidelity of the original, while creating gameplay that feels unique to Steel Frontiers,” he said. “Leveraging Unreal Engine 5’s powerful graphics capabilities, we’re able to deliver breathtaking visuals and smooth multiplayer experiences across both mobile and PC (PURPLE).”

Horizon Steel Frontiers was unveiled earlier this week, and will be coming to PC, iOS and Android. The title is set to feature many of the more iconic aspects of Guerrilla Games’ Horizon series, including the ability to use certain Machines as mounts to explore the world. However, along with this, it is also slated to feature plenty of its own unique gameplay features. Lee had spoken about these features during the title’s announcement.

“We’ve added unique, original gameplay elements to the process of taking down giant machines,” he said. “For example, after destroying a specific part of a machine, you can quickly approach and climb onto it using a Pullcaster, set traps on the damaged part, and inflict status effects.”

The MMO will focus around players gathering in the Deadlands alongside thousands of other hunters in order to take on the threat posed by the Machines. It was announced with a pair of trailers, one of which showcased the gameplay that made it quite easy to draw comparisons with Capcom’s Monster Hunter franchise.

NCSoft has also noted that Horizon Steel Frontiers is being developed by making extensive use of AI tools across its development pipeline, from programming to the creation of art. The company also noted that other studios are also using these tools, and that we will get to see more titles use the technology in similar ways moving forward.

Along with this, Guerrilla Games is also reportedly working on its own multiplayer game based on the Horizon universe. For more details, check out our coverage.

“Just to clear up some confusion I’ve seen, the newly announced NCSoft Horizon MMO is different from the multiplayer Horizon game that’s in development at Guerrilla Games,” wrote Schreier on social media. “That one is Guerrilla’s next big project.”

Whether this multiplayer game in development at Guerrilla Games will be a full-fledged sequel or a smaller project similar to Ghost of Tsushima’s Legends mode is currently unknown. However, with Schreier noting that the scale of the project is “big”, it is likely going to be a much more in-depth multiplayer experience rather than just being a spin-off.

While Guerrilla Games has been known for its work on the single-player-only Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, the studio is far from a stranger to multiplayer titles. Guerrilla Games first started coming to prominence in the PS3 era thanks to its work on the Killzone franchise, which featured single-player campaigns as well as elaborate multiplayer competitive modes that showcased their FPS gameplay.

However, Killzone: Shadow Fall was the last title the studio had worked on in the franchise before eventually moving on to the Horizon series.

Horizon Steel Frontiers was officially unveiled earlier this month by NCSoft. The title doesn’t yet have a release date. However, the company has confirmed that it will be coming to PC, iOS and Android. NCSoft has described the multiplayer title as tapping into quite a few of the things that are iconic to the Horizon franchise while also featuring unique gameplay elements of its own.

“We’ve added unique, original gameplay elements to the process of taking down giant machines,” said executive producer Sung-Gu Lee during the announcement. “For example, after destroying a specific part of a machine, you can quickly approach and climb onto it using a Pullcaster, set traps on the damaged part, and inflict status effects.”

The title will also have quite a bit of emphasis on giving players plenty of customisation options, ranging from body type to hair and makeup and even the choice of tribe from between the Nora, the Tenakth, the Utaru and the Oseram.

“In Horizon Steel Frontiers, every player is a hero,” said Lee. “We’ve put great care into customization, allowing you to fully express your individuality—even down to the smallest details. During character creation, we’ve incorporated the tribes from the original Horizon world.”

Interestingly, NCSoft has also noted that it is making extensive use of AI for the development of Horizon Steel Frontiers. Among the things for which AI is being used include coding as well as art. The company also noted that other game development companies are also using similar tools, and that we will see it becoming a lot more common in the coming years.

Just to clear up some confusion I've seen, the newly announced NCSoft Horizon MMO is different from the multiplayer Horizon game that's in development at Guerrilla Games. That one is Guerrilla's next big project

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.bsky.social) 2025-11-13T13:59:15.100Z