On November 13, at the G-STAR 2025 game show held in South Korea, the organizer NCSOFT unexpectedly announced "Horizon Steel Frontiers".Many people may be a little shocked to hear that the Horizon series has transformed from a single-player experience into a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), and that it was developed by NCSOFT, a large Korean game company, instead of Guerrilla Games.

This next-generation MMORPG will be launched on Windows PC (NC Soft's own Purple platform) and mobile platforms. Players can experience thrilling battles and strategic cooperation with giant mechanical monsters.The core concept of the game is "the fun of working together to defeat giant mechanical monsters."Unlike the original game, which focused on single-player gameplay, this game puts teamwork and tactical combat at its core.

The series' unique wire-controlled action system has been enhanced, allowing players to make full use of the surrounding terrain during combat.Additionally, new features include collecting weapons from fallen mechanical monsters and carrying them into other battles for reuse.

Additionally, the protagonist will be a customizable player character, not Aloy, and there appear to be very detailed customization options during character creation.

Surprisingly, this announcement omitted one important platform: it will not be available on PS5.As a new game developed in cooperation with Sony’s first-party studios and based on Sony’s own first-party IP, why is it not available on Sony’s flagship console? This is really puzzling.

According to NCSoft executive producer Lee Song, the studio is fully capable of bringing "Horizon: Steel Frontier" to the PS5 platform.In fact, they really want this game to be released on PS5.So why didn’t PS5 appear in the list of supported platforms when the game was announced? It seems we can only ask Sony.

Lee Song explained in an interview that NCSoft has "no reason" not to port the game to the PS5 platform. "We would love to do it, but it's not something we can decide on our own, so we want to continue discussions."

So if NCSoft is really keen on bringing Horizon: Steel Frontier to PS5, the remaining conclusion is that Sony is blocking the game from coming to its flagship console for unknown reasons.

The speculations given by foreign media are as follows:

It may eventually come to PS5, but Sony hopes it will debut on other platforms first as a way to expand its influence on other platforms outside of the PlayStation ecosystem.At present, it is first accumulating a player base on mobile and PC, and then attracting those PS5 players, because Sony is convinced that these PS5 players will definitely buy this game.

Perhaps Sony simply doesn’t want “Horizon: Steel Frontier” to be available on PS5 to differentiate the gaming experience on the console from PC and mobile.