New Horizon DLC only coming to PS5

Horizon Forbidden West, the follow-up to the popular Horizon Zero Dawn, has been announced to be getting a DLC expansion, but PS4 players will miss out

Horizon Forbidden West launched on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 earlier this year, but its just-announced DLC expansion won’t be available to PS4 players.

The new expansion was announced at The Game Awards on Friday, called Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores. The DLC takes protagonist Aloy to a future post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, where she will reportedly be pursuing a sinister threat.

The first game in the series, Horizon Zero Dawn, was widely well-received by players, even if it was overshadowed by the release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launching just a week later. Forbidden West faced a similar fate, with Elden Ring launching shortly after the game and taking over the conversation on social media.

Horizon Forbidden West: The Burning Shores DLC expansion is set to launch on April 19, 2023, which thankfully gives it just a little bit of breathing room before The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom releases in mid-May.

Horizon Zero Dawn revealed that the game took place in the real world, and the new DLC takes protagonist Aloy to Los Angeles. Picture: Sony

Unfortunately, Sony has confirmed that players who bought and played the game on PlayStation 4 will be missing out on the expansion. The official blog post announcing the DLC says the following:

“Our creative vision for the Burning Shores is an ambitious expansion which will take Aloy to the ruins of Los Angeles. It’s an overgrown and fractured city that can be fully explored via the water and flying on the back of a Sunwing. To achieve this grand vision technically and creatively, we’ve made the difficult decision to focus all our efforts on making an incredible experience exclusively for the PlayStation 5 console.”

It does look like the decision was justified at least, as the trailer for the expansion shows the game looking the best it ever has, with a grander scale and more detailed environments. Still, that’s of little use to PS4 players, who now have to make the choice to either miss out on the next chapter of the game, or pay a price to upgrade to the PlayStation 5.

That’s a tall ask, given that PS5 consoles recently got more expensive, rising from $749.95 up to $799.95 for the disc console and from $599.95 to $649.95 for the all-digital variant. Players who opt to upgrade to the PS5 will at least be able to upgrade their copies of Horizon Forbidden West to the PS5 version of the game at no extra cost.

Horizon Forbidden West isn’t the only expansion coming that will miss out on last-generation consoles, either. The Game Awards also revealed that Idris Elba is set to star in new Cyberpunk 2077 DLC, titled The Phantom Liberty, but that, too, will be skipping out on the PS4 and Xbox One, only releasing on the PS5 and Xbox Series, along with PC.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.