Horizon Forbidden West is getting a PS5-exclusive expansion, Burning Shores

Horizon Forbidden West, one of PlayStation’s biggest games of the year, is getting its first major expansion, Burning Shores, as revealed The Game Awards 2022 on Thursday. The expansion hits on April 19th, 2023, but you’ll only be able to play it on PlayStation 5, Sony said in a blog post.

The new trailer showed off some beautiful-looking landscapes — including the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles — and revealed that some areas will be filled with flowing lava. But it won’t be playable within Horizon Forbidden West on PlayStation 4. “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,” Mathijs de Jonge, game director at developer Guerrilla, said in Sony’s post.

The release of Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores comes more than a year after the game’s original February launch. In her review, my colleague Ash Parrish found it easy to get lost in the game’s incredible world. I agree with that, but personally thought there were way too many small chores and crafting items shoved in my face. Hopefully this new expansion is a tighter experience.

Update December 8th, 10:16PM ET: Added that the expansion will be exclusive to PS5.