The developers at Guerrilla Games have issued a statement stating that they're redoubling their efforts to fix Horizon: Zero Dawn's PC issues. One of the PlayStation 4's signature exclusive titles in the past generation, Horizon: Zero Dawn is all about a future Earth where humans hide in walled-off cities, and robotic dinosaurs rule the wastes. Players take control of Alloy, a young woman with a mysterious path that's seemingly tied up with the past of this future. Alloy must break free of expectations and journey through an open world searching for answers and pulling off some Far Cry-esque hunting along the way.
The PC release of Horizon: Zero Dawn is a big first from Sony. Outside of a few smaller titles (the biggest of which being Helldivers), Sony has not published games anywhere but their own consoles and mobile devices. It follows in the footsteps of major console rival Microsoft, who has been pushing hard for its own first-party lineup to appear on PC and console at release. Sony games are generally more valued in the marketplace, but Microsoft's efforts have seemingly shifted the PlayStation strategy enough that they don't' completely ignore the personal computer.
In an announcement on the game's official Steam community, Guerrilla Games acknowledged the crashes, bugs, and other technical issues many PC players are experiencing. Considering that Horizon: Zero Dawn is likely a test for a wider PlayStation initiative, there were bound to be some issues, and Guerrilla promises that it's on the case. The PC port of Horizon: Zero Dawn is greatly expanded from the console release, including full 60 FPS support even at 4K resolutions. There's also a few extra bells and whistles like improved reflections and dynamic foliage.
Players have experienced everything from crashes during first boot to 4K resolution issues that require fiddling with settings to overcome. When the game isn't crashing, there is constant stuttering throughout the experience, even when players are just walking around the world. None of these extensive issues were in the PS4 Pro version, and the quality settings for that version are included on PC under an "Original" setting. They equate to around "Medium" on all the graphics settings, with two options above that.
Horizon: Zero Dawn's Steam reviews have improved slightly since a review bomb on launch, but plenty of players are still experiencing these issues. So far, there hasn't been an update to the game since it came out on August 7. That was a Friday, which means the problem has had time to build over two days where most of the developers at both Guerilla and their porting partners at Virtuos are likely not at work - nor should they be expected to. Still, the game's current state a bad look compared to the success Microsoft has been having as of late on PC. Their most recent release, Obsidian's Grounded, isn't as high profile as Horizon: Zero Dawn, but it launched without a hitch across Xbox and PC. If that's the future for first-party Xbox titles, it puts PlayStation games at a disadvantage until they can get their ports in order.
Source: Guerrilla Games