Killzone has been dormant since 2013. Thirteen years of silence, while Sony’s PlayStation brand found a new flagship in the Horizon series and the Helghast gathered dust. But a new report from MP1st, published September 6, 2026, claims that’s about to change — and that the revival is coming from a direction nobody predicted. According to sources familiar with the project, People Can Fly — the Polish studio behind Bulletstorm and Outriders — is in the early stages of developing a new Killzone project under the codenamed partnership known as Project Delta.
Here’s everything the report says, what we know about People Can Fly’s involvement, and how Horizon’s troubles connect to Killzone’s unexpected return.
What Is the Report Actually Claiming?
MP1st was clear throughout its report about the confidence levels behind different elements of the story. Here’s what was stated with varying degrees of certainty:
- Confirmed (per sources): A new Killzone project is in very early stages of production. Guerrilla Games is involved in a collaborative capacity with an external, non-PlayStation-first-party studio.
- Most consistent intel: The project is a “visual uplift of an older title” — a remake or remaster rather than a brand new entry. The most logical candidate, per the report, is the original 2004 PlayStation 2 Killzone.
- Strongly indicated, not definitively confirmed: People Can Fly is the external studio leading development, tied to their existing Project Delta agreement with Sony.
- Also heard, less consistent: The project could be a full reboot rather than a remake, though this was a less common thread in what MP1st gathered.
- Timeline note: An official announcement is not expected anytime soon.
The report also reveals that Horizon 3 is expected to come after this Killzone project — a significant timeline implication given how early in development Killzone reportedly sits.
Who Are People Can Fly and What Is Project Delta?
People Can Fly is a Warsaw-based development studio with a long history of working on technically demanding shooters. They co-developed Gears of War: Judgment with Epic Games, created the well-regarded Bulletstorm in 2011 (recently remastered in 2024 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC), and developed the third-person looter shooter Outriders in 2021.
In March 2025, People Can Fly officially announced — via a filing to the Warsaw Stock Exchange — that they had entered into an agreement with Sony Interactive Entertainment to co-develop a game based on an existing PlayStation IP. The project was referred to only as “Project Delta”. The filing described it as “production of a prototype of a new video game codenamed Project Delta, based on intellectual property rights belonging to the Publisher” — which is Sony in this context.
At the time, the gaming community immediately began speculating about which PlayStation IP was involved. The two most frequently cited candidates were Killzone and SOCOM — both dormant PlayStation shooter franchises with passionate fanbases. MP1st’s report now firmly connects Project Delta to Killzone rather than SOCOM, making the year-old speculation significantly more concrete.
People Can Fly’s shooter pedigree is the obvious reason Sony would tap them for Killzone specifically. The franchise has always been a technically demanding military sci-fi first-person shooter, and PCF’s experience with both FPS design (Bulletstorm) and large-scale action (Outriders, Gears of War: Judgment) maps naturally onto that project profile.
Why Is People Can Fly Leading Rather Than Guerrilla?
The answer to this question is directly tied to Guerrilla Games’ current situation, and it’s a more complicated story than it might initially appear. Guerrilla has been managing two significant internal priorities simultaneously, neither of which has gone smoothly.
Horizon Hunters Gathering, the live-service multiplayer spinoff, was originally the studio’s primary post-Forbidden West project. It was publicly shown and generated player feedback — which was apparently negative enough that, per reporting earlier in 2026, the game was rebooted away from its live-service format into a more traditional multiplayer structure. That rework is now Guerrilla’s immediate priority, absorbing significant studio resources.
Separately, a small team at Guerrilla is working on Horizon 3, the next mainline single-player entry. Reports consistently describe this as a small, early-stage effort — years from release.
The original plan, according to MP1st’s sources, was for Guerrilla to shift significant focus to the Killzone project once Hunters Gathering was completed. The Hunters Gathering reboot disrupted that schedule. With Guerrilla’s bandwidth tied up, having People Can Fly lead the Killzone development makes structural sense — the partner studio can drive the project forward while Guerrilla provides IP expertise, lore guidance, and eventual additional support as Hunters Gathering stabilises.
It’s worth noting that this co-development model is one Sony has used effectively before. Until Dawn 2 pairs Firesprite with AdHoc Studio in a narrative capacity. The Ghost of Tsushima franchise was developed by Sucker Punch with Sony oversight. Sony’s first-party ecosystem increasingly relies on collaborative structures rather than fully isolated internal development.
The Killzone Franchise — Why It Matters and Why Now
Killzone’s history is worth understanding to appreciate what a revival would mean. The series debuted on PlayStation 2 in 2004 — a game that arrived trailing enormous pre-release hype, partly generated by a CGI E3 trailer that was widely (and notoriously) mistaken for real-time gameplay. The term “Halo Killer” was attached to Killzone before it launched, an expectation it never fully met either commercially or critically.
But the franchise built a genuine following over its run. Killzone 2 (2009) is still regarded by many as one of the best-looking and most atmospherically effective PS3 shooters ever released. Killzone 3 (2011) added Move support and 3D gameplay options. And Killzone Shadow Fall — the PS4 launch title in 2013 — was one of the most visually impressive launch games of that generation, even as its story and multiplayer received mixed reviews. Its online servers finally shut down in August 2022.
The series has been completely dormant since 2013. No ports, no remasters, no new entries. In the interim, Guerrilla pivoted entirely to Horizon Zero Dawn (2017) and Forbidden West (2022), effectively retiring Killzone as an active franchise. The Helghast — the game’s iconic gas-masked antagonist faction, one of PlayStation’s most visually distinctive enemy designs — have been absent from new releases for over a decade.
A remake of the original 2004 game would serve multiple commercial purposes: it introduces new PlayStation owners (who may have never played PS2 games) to the franchise before a potential new entry, it allows Guerrilla and PCF to establish the tone and visual style of a revived Killzone, and it would be a lower-risk first step than a full sequel or reboot.
People Can Fly’s Busy Development Slate
One detail the report flags directly: People Can Fly is currently juggling an unusually large number of projects simultaneously. Alongside the Killzone/Project Delta work, confirmed or reported PCF projects include:
- Gears of War: E-Day (co-development with The Coalition, launching October 6, 2026)
- An Xbox/Microsoft project (unannounced)
- A Krafton project (unannounced)
- Project Florence — a recently discovered partnership with 2K Games
- Project Delta — the Sony/Killzone project
That’s an ambitious concurrent development portfolio for a studio of PCF’s size, and it adds to the “very early stages” characterisation of the Killzone project. E-Day ships in October — after that, PCF’s attention can redirect more fully toward its pipeline of unannounced projects. But the parallel nature of all these commitments means Killzone isn’t going to be arriving quickly regardless of how development unfolds.
What Would a Killzone Remake Actually Look Like?
If the project is indeed a “visual uplift” of the original 2004 PS2 game, the modern comparison point that comes to mind immediately is the Dead Space remake (2023) — a title that took a beloved but technically dated horror shooter and rebuilt it with modern assets, expanded story content, and updated mechanical design while preserving the core game’s structure and atmosphere. That approach was commercially and critically successful, and it’s a reasonable template for what a Killzone remake might pursue.
The original Killzone’s story — the Helghast invasion of Vekta, fought from the perspective of ISA soldiers including Jan Templar and Sergeant Rico Velasquez — has strong bones even if the 2004 execution was uneven. Updated visuals bringing the Helghast to PS5 fidelity, improved gunplay drawing on everything learned through Killzone 2, 3, and Shadow Fall, and a tighter narrative could produce something genuinely compelling for both returning fans and new players.
A full reboot — which MP1st notes was a less consistent but not absent thread in their intelligence — would be a bolder swing. It would require more original creative work but would allow Sony and Guerrilla to rebuild the franchise’s lore and tone from scratch without being bound by the original’s limitations. Sony’s recent record with IP revival suggests the company has learned when to preserve and when to reimagine.
What Happens Next
The honest answer, as MP1st stated directly, is: nothing officially announced for a while. The project is in very early development. People Can Fly is still finishing Gears of War: E-Day. Guerrilla is managing the Hunters Gathering reboot. Horizon 3 is further out than previously assumed. The development timeline for this Killzone project is measured in years, not months.
What the report confirms is that the franchise is alive and being actively worked on — which is significantly more than anyone knew before September 6, 2026. After 13 years, the Helghast are apparently on their way back. The only question now is how long the wait will be. Legacy PlayStation franchises returning from long absences is a pattern that’s accelerating across the industry right now, and Killzone fits that moment well.
