New reports claim that entertainment company Sony (SONY) has canceled a Horizon massively multiplayer online (MMO) video game that was being developed by South Korean studio NCSoft. The reports state that the new MMO was canceled at the start of the year with developers being shifted to other teams.
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According to these reports, the Horizon MMO was being developed under the codename Project H and would later be called Skyline. It was reportedly canceled alongside Project J and Project Pantera, two other games in development at NCSoft.
Sony has focused on the Horizon series, which started with Horizon Zero Dawn in 2017, to make it one of PlayStation’s blockbusters. That’s worked out well so far with over 32 million units sold as of May 2023. The series includes two mainline games, several downloadable content (DLC), a virtual reality (VR) game, a remaster of the original, and a Lego spinoff.
Why Was the Horizon MMO Canceled?
It’s unclear why the Horizon MMO was canceled but a couple of possibilities are worth considering. One is Sony’s move away from live service games, which an MMO would be. Reports claim PlayStation has canceled two other live service games this year, one of which was reportedly an entry in the God of War series.
Another possibility is Sony didn’t want the Horizon MMO to overlap with another project in the series. Guerrilla Games, the developer behind the Horizon series, is developing its own multiplayer entry named Horizon Online. The similarity between these two games might have been enough to warrant the cancellation of the Horizon MMO.
Is SONY Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, the analysts’ consensus rating for Sony is Moderate Buy based on two Buy ratings over the last three months. With that comes an average price target of $24, a high of $25, and a low of $23. This represents a potential 14.59% upside for SONY shares.