The new game is titled Horizon Steel Frontiers, created through a partnership between Sony and the Korean video game company NCSoft. A recently released video that runs for over 10 minutes features a blend of cinematic and pre-alpha gameplay footage, along with developer interviews. This game will heavily focus on battling the Horizon series’ massive mechanical beasts, and you’ll be able to team up with others in the process.
Sony and a PR firm representing NCSoft have not yet responded to requests for comments. The Verge was the first to notice promotional artwork for Steel Frontiers on a website meant for sharing game assets approved for media and influencers. It looks like the art was posted prematurely, possibly ahead of an announcement scheduled for the G-Star 2025 event in Korea later tonight. The site also included a link to a publicly accessible Google Drive containing the video. As for platforms, Steel Frontiers will launch on PC, iOS, and Android.
The gameplay footage reveals players facing off against beasts while exploring lush natural settings and towering metal structures familiar to anyone who has played the Horizon games. “Horizon Steel Frontiers is a full-fledged MMORPG that NCSoft has built specifically for mobile,” says Jan-Bart van Beek, studio director at PlayStation’s Guerilla Games, in the video. “With Steel Frontiers, you can step into this world anywhere, anytime. Players take on the role of machine hunters, seeking opportunities in a region called the Deathlands, inspired by Arizona and New Mexico. You’ll be sharing the frontier with thousands of other players, sometimes teaming up to defeat machines and at other times competing with rival tribes for resources. This blend of cooperation and competition creates moments you’d never be able to script.”
“The core concept of Horizon Steel Frontiers can be summed up in one phrase: the thrill of taking down colossal machines,” says executive producer Sung-Gu Lee in the video. “Hunting massive machines was one of the biggest draws of the original Horizon series. Now, we’re broadening that experience into the MMORPG realm.” Lee elaborates that there will be new mechanics for fighting machines, such as picking up weapons dropped by beasts and using them in future battles.
The video also showcases the game’s character customization features. In Steel Frontiers, instead of playing as Aloy, the series’ main character up to this point, players will have the freedom to create their own character. While no release date was mentioned in the video, Lee indicated that the team is striving to make the game available “as soon as possible.”
