Horizon Forbidden West is out now on PS4 and PS5, and critics and fans alike are loving the game, praisings its visuals, gameplay, and story. By all accounts, Forbidden West is an excellent sequel to an already excellent game, Horizon Zero Dawn. However, Zero Dawn came to PC, and Forbidden West is currently only out on PlayStation. In this article, we'll explain if Horizon Forbidden West is coming to PC or Steam Deck.
Horizon Forbidden West on PC: Will It Happen?
Horizon Zero Dawn came to PC years after the game's original release on PS4. This came as part of Sony's ongoing quest to bring some PlayStation exclusives to PC; however, not any and all PlayStation games are actually coming to PC.
Sony puts a lot of thought into what games to port and when. The company wants to minimize its chance of losing out on PlayStation sales while maximizing its chance at getting a ton of PC gamers to play something formally locked to a console.
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Horizon Zero Dawn had been out for years and largely sold the copies it was going to sell, but a sequel was also in development, so a PC port of Zero Dawn made a lot of sense: It gave everyone who wasn't going to play the game on PlayStation a shot at falling in love with the franchise, and it would turn some PC gamers into PlayStation customers when Forbidden West eventually came out.
Now, Forbidden West is out. Sony's likely going to give the game some breathing room so that anybody who played the first game on PC can really consider whether or not they want to pick up a console to play the sequel, but that won't go on forever.
PS5 stock is still fairly limited, and prices are high, so it's not exactly easy to get someone during a pandemic to buy an expensive new piece of tech alongside just to play a single game. The conclusion here is fairly simple: Eventually, Forbidden West is likely to come to PC.
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An announcement in 2023 about a 2024 release is the earliest we could possibly expect Forbidden West PC, though, of course, timelines are constantly in flux living during a pandemic, so it's impossible to say for certain until it's officially confirmed.
Ultimately, once Sony feels like its gotten as many PC players as it can to become PlayStation gamers, it'll bring the game to PC. It's just a matter of when the company decides its reached that point, if ever.
Horizon Forbidden West on Steam Deck: Will It Happen?
Neither Forbidden West nor Zero Dawn are likely to ever get official Steam Deck ports. Sony is just barely dipping its toes in the PC gaming waters, other platforms are likely out of the question for many years, if ever.
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Sony bringing games to PC makes sense. Depending on what it brings to PC and when it can make a lot of money off games that have stopped selling on PlayStation. This is nothing more than a business decision, not Sony warming up to the general idea of just releasing whatever games on whichever systems.
This is why they pick only very specific games and release them years after the original game has come out on PlayStation. Early on, Forbidden West was one of the first games to make the transition to PC because it was the right game at the right time.
The good news is that Steam Deck doesn't need Forbidden West to come to Deck. As long as the game comes to PC, Deck will almost certainly be able to play the PC version of the game through Valve's Proton software that allows Windows PC games to be played on the Linux-based SteamOS of Steam Deck.
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However, Forbidden West hasn't yet been announced for PC, and since Forbidden West only came out recently, there are likely at the very least years to go until we can reasonably expect Forbidden West to actually release on PC. Though, eventually, it does seem inevitable Forbidden West comes to PC.
How PS5 Supply Impacts Forbidden West Ports
PS5 supply is still strained, and prices are still high for consumers still living and working during a pandemic. While the PS5 has sold extraordinarily well, many more people want PS5s that have not been able yet to get one.
Accordingly, this means that the PS5, and its games, are still going to continue selling reliably well into the future, slowly building up the console's playerbase. And new players means new chances for Sony to Forbidden West to people.
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As long as there are a lot of people out there who might want to play Forbidden West on PS5 if they had a PS5, it won't make sense for Sony to bring the game to PC and give those gamers another option outside of picking up a PlayStation to play.
It's hard to say where exactly this line is, and Sony likely doesn't know yet, either. But PS5 is going to continue to sell, so there is likely a lot of value left in keeping Forbidden West exclusive to PlayStation. Only time will tell, however, how it all actually shakes out.
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