PlayStation and Guerrilla’s Horizon franchise, which kicked off in 2017 with the debut of Zero Dawn, and plunged us all into a world that was both primal and futuristic at the same time, has now surpassed 38m copies sold.
The news comes as part of Sony’s recently filed legal complaint against Tencent, where the company accused the Chinese technology conglomerate of ripping off its Horizon video game franchise with its upcoming release Light of Motiram.
Tucked away within the filing is text which reads:
“The Horizon franchise is immensely successful and widely distributed. The Horizon franchise has sold over 38m copies globally. There would be no question that Tencent had access to the Horizon franchise when it created Light of Motiram, even if it had not expressly approached [Sony Interactive Entertainment] with a request to license [Sony Interactive Entertainment’s] intellectual property rights in the franchise.”
While Zero Dawn and its sequel were originally PlayStation exclusives, they both subsequently released on PC. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, which offered a souped up version of the original release, was also launched last year.
As well as the two mainline games, the Horizon series also has DLC, as well as VR release Call of the Mountain and the brickified Lego Horizon Adventures.
To compare Horizon’s latest sales number with another of Sony’s properties, in 2022 PlayStation announced that Santa Monica’s God of War reboot had surpassed 23m units sold. That same year, the company announced that its sequel God of War Ragnarök had sold 5.1m copies in its first week, making it officially the fastest-selling first-party PlayStation title to date.
By November 2023, PlayStation revealed God of War Ragnarök had sold through more than 15m units worldwide across both PlayStation 4 and PS5. This would by now bring the God of War games to a sales total of in excess of 38m units.
For more on the Horizon series, earlier this year Aloy actress Ashly Burch spoke to Eurogamer about her thoughts on AI, and why she believes Guerrilla replacing all actors with robots is “not going to happen”.