It's official: Horizon Forbidden West won't be a PS5 launch game

If you were hoping the PS5 would launch with some of the games shown during last week’s showcase, we’ve got some bad news: many of the 23 PS5 games shown won’t be available until sometime next year.

The newest game to add to that pile is Horizon Forbidden West, the sequel to the smash-hit Horizon: Zero Dawn from developers Guerrilla Games. The game’s director Mathjis de Jonge has confirmed in a video that the team is shooting for a launch ‘sometime in 2021’ and will miss the console’s late 2020 launch window.

The new video, published today on YouTube, has de Jonge walking viewers through the game’s setting (the Pacific Coast of the United States) and highlighting some of the major overhauls coming to the game, which are powered by the PS5’s hefty hardware.

While it's disappointing to hear one of the most anticipated games of the PS5 won't be available right at launch, the video does a great job of showing us what to expect when the game finally gets here: lush, new environments and instant fast-travel with zero loading screens.

The video also gives us our first look at some of the new creatures we'll fight in the Forbidden West and a quick peek at the tribes who inhabit future San Francisco.

So what are we going to play at launch?

At this point the answer isn't incredibly clear. Of the 23 games Sony showed off at its PS5 gameplay showcase, only a handful said they'd launch in 2020.

Among the games we're expecting is Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which Sony has since clarified is a standalone game similar to Uncharted: Lost Legacy, and Astro's Playroom, which Sony says comes pre-loaded on every PS5.

We've also heard that there will be a few cross-gen titles that will be available at or around launch including Destiny 2, Madden 21 and Fortnite. (GTA5 was also shown off at the event, but won't be available on PS5 until 2021.)

For now, it's pretty unclear what exactly we'll be playing, but we'll be keeping a close eye on all the previously announced PS5 games as we get closer to launch.