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.
If I totally throw out all of the woke-ism, Horizon would just be so far down the list for me. I played the first Horizon when I had my PS4 end-to-end including the expansion. The thing is, it's still just modern Assassin's Creed with mecha-dinos, and if I was itching for that gameplay loop, I could just buy Valhalla for $15. I think anyone who actually cared about the Horizon universe played it on PS5.
If it comes to Sony ports, I'm way more interested in Ghost of Tsushima, although there's no chance I will buy that at launch. I waited 4 years, what's another six months? I might even wait for it on GoG. I rarely believe devs have earned full price for their games, so I rarely pay it.
Maybe Dragon's Dogma 2 will get better, I'd buy it at some point for sure.
And this is why I avoid these types of games. I hate the new takes on Assassins Creed nowadays. I liked 2 and brotherhood, 3 entirely lost me and I only ever looked in shortly. Black flag I feel I gotta play at some point for the pirate ships but other than that? I don't need yet another tower climbing open world with shitty tacked on rpg elements. I'm good and would rather mod skyrim again or something.
Really unlikely suggestion, try Unity. It was railed on because of launch bugs, but it was still traditional Assassin's Creed.