Horizon Forbidden West holiday 2021 release window "isn't quite certain," says PlayStation Studios head

Horizon Forbidden West is currently scheduled to arrive in holiday 2021 according to PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst, but its final release date isn't set in stone. 

"For Horizon, we think we are on track to release this holiday season," Hulst said in a new post on the PlayStation Blog. "But that isn’t quite certain yet, and we’re working as hard as we can to confirm that to you as soon as we can." 

This comes on the heels of a dedicated State of Play presentation overviewing Horizon Forbidden West. After the show, developer Guerrilla Games affirmed that development is "on track", and that it would have more precise release date news to share soon. 

We're still without an exact release date, and the holiday 2021 window that Hulst provided is still subject to change, but the release of the long-awaited Horizon sequel is rapidly coming into focus. 

Horizon Forbidden West has been positioned alongside God of War 2, otherwise known as God of War Ragnarok, as a tentpole first-party PlayStation game that will demonstrate the power of the PS5 without leaving PS4 players behind. As Hulst explained, these two games were impacted by the coronavirus pandemic especially severely because it greatly restricted access to the motion capture and other recording functions that these games are built on. 

"With these things, something’s gotta give," Hulst says. "It cannot be the quality of our titles, and it surely won’t be the health or the wellbeing of our amazing team." 

On top of other quarantine complications, to say nothing of the usual hurdles in game development, this has led to some soft release date estimations over at PlayStation Studios. Horizon Forbidden West, at least, is still planned for this holiday. Meanwhile, God of War 2 has officially been delayed to 2022 – not that it was ever really expected this year to begin with. 

We're at least six months, give or take, from the next Horizon game, but at least we've got some juicy new footage and details to chew on in the meantime. Here are five things we learned from the Horizon Forbidden West State of Play.