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1464740cookie-checkHorizon: Zero Dawn Celebrates Second Birthday And 10 Million Copies Sold
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2019/03

Horizon: Zero Dawn Celebrates Second Birthday And 10 Million Copies Sold

Horizon: Zero Dawn celebrated its second birthday recently and, to celebrate, Guerrilla Games Managing Director Hermen Hulst dropped some updated sales figures, as well as some fun behind-the-scenes details about the creation of the PlayStation 4 exclusive.

Horizon hit the scene on Feb. 28, 2017, introducing the world to its heroine, Aloy, and a world infested with mechanical monsters. Guerrilla Games’ follow-up to the Killzone series drew a lot of comparisons to Nintendo’s own The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, primarily because they launched at the same time and were surprisingly similar takes on the open-world adventure genre.

According to Hulst’s update on the PlayStation Blog, the two games received very similar commercial success, too. The Guerrilla big-wig announced that Zero Dawn has sold “well over 10 million” copies worldwide, with the latest reports for Breath of the Wild pegging it at 10.3 million copies sold. Since Horizon sold 7.6 million copies in its first year on the market, that means the game looks to have pushed about 3 million more copies out the door in year two.

With that kind of success, it seems pretty obvious that Guerrilla will be rolling out a sequel at some point, but I wouldn’t expect an announcement anytime soon. This late in the PlayStation 4’s life cycle, it’s unlikely any major titles are left to be announced for the console. Given the timing, I’m thinking it’s much more likely we’ll see Aloy’s next adventure announced for the launch window of the PlayStation 5, but that’s 100 percent speculation on my part.

On top of updated sales figures, Hulst included some rather impressive cosplay and art sent inspired by Horizon, as well as some interesting tidbits concerning development. For instance, in early production, since the character design had not been decided yet, Aloy’s model was a holdover from Killzone: Shadow Fall, and one of the images even shows her firing a more traditional machine gun at a robot dino. That robot dino is also unique, in that it was an early prototype that looks more like a kid’s toy than a threatening robotic T-Rex. Oh and, in case you’re wondering what went into the sound mixing for the game’s cast of creatures, the raptor-like Watcher’s feature barks recorded from a Chihuahua.

Anyway, it’s worth a read if you’ve got some time and are interested in some lesser-known facts about how Horizon got made.

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