Sony is having a busy week, filing a lawsuit against Chinese giant Tencent over allegations that Tencent has created a clone of the Horizon series. That court case should be interesting to watch, but until those fireworks start going off we can enjoy picking over some of the little details.
In the legal documents filed against Tencent, Sony revealed updated sales numbers for the Horizon series. According to them, the games have now surpassed 38 million copies sold in total. That’s 5.3 million more copies than when we last got official word back in April of 2023. Since that data was released, Horizon Call of the Mountain, LEGO Horizon Adventures and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered also launched.
While sales of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered undoubtedly counted toward this total, we don’t know how Sony is counting Zero Dawn Remastered upgrades. Nor do we know if any DLC is being included, either.
So the 5.3 million copies sold since April 2023 will be a mixture of all these new releases, plus the original two games which are frequently available at a discount. Unfortunately, I can’t break it down any further without venturing into pure speculation. But let’s not let that stop us, eh? Horizon Call of the Mountain and LEGO Horizon both likely did not contribute much to the 5.3 million. LEGO Horizon charted poorly, and even quite successful VR games don’t shift a lot of copies. In other words, most of the 5.3 million probably came from the first two games and the remaster.
But regardless of how it all breaks down, it’s easy to see why PlayStation keeps pushing the Horizon series so hard. At 38 million copies, Horizon sits as PlayStation’s 6th biggest franchise in terms of copies sold, a full 3 million ahead of The Last of Us and just 2 million shy of Ratchet & Clank.
Right now, we reliably know of at least three more Horizon games in the works, comprising of a third entry in the mainline series, some form of multiplayer spinoff and an MMO being developed by NCSoft. There’s also a movie/tv series in the works as well.