Dragon’s Dogma 2, despite catastrophically bad optimization and very negative reviews, has already broken 200k concurrent players on Steam.
Horizon Forbidden West, a purportedly flawless port with very positive reviews, has so far topped out at just over 25k concurrent, roughly half the peak achieved by the first Horizon.
Things can certainly change. Also, Horizon is a two year old game at this point, although still one of the best looking games in existence.
But those numbers are anemic, especially in the wake of Sony’s last PC release (Helldivers 2) hitting almost half a million concurrent players.
Is it possible that the Sweet Baby Inc. story penetrated the mainstream far enough to influence consumer behavior? I’m not aware of any formal connection between HFW and SBI, but it does seem like gamers are becoming more conscious of both the woke taint on AAA and their own ability to avoid it.
Who knows. Maybe it’s just a mirage. A man can dream.
Could be that, could be it's an older game but from what I remember Horizon was a bit more of a niche audience.
I might be misremembering but despite how hyped up it was, I swear it's audience wasn't as large as Killzone which they also made before this.
The first Horizon sold 20 million units.
It was also an “older game” when it launched on Steam, but it still hit 50k concurrent players. Time will tell with the sequel, but it looks like a big step back in terms of players.
Dragon’s Dogma 1 topped out at like 27-28k concurrent players on Steam.