Hollow Knight fans have heard this time and time again, but at least one industry expert expects Silksong to finally hit shelves in 2025. Jason Schreier, journalist and author of Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, believes the long-awaited sequel will land with explosive results. It’s only his intuition, but there are few people with a better track record for this kind of thing.
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“I predict that it will finally come out this year — and it will sell millions of copies,” he wrote for Bloomberg. That may seem like a staggering figure on its own, but a cursory glance at the game’s immense social media popularity paints a clear picture of how Team Cherry could get there when it’s all said and done.
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For those out of the loop (or who have simply forgotten) Hollow Knight: Silksong was announced in 2019. A gameplay trailer was shown off in 2022, leading many to assume the game would finally emerge from the darkness in 2023, but Team Cherry has largely been silent since then. Two years on and the industry is still waiting to get their hands on anything more tangible. Constant release date speculation, impatient fan demands, and a general desire to play the game has generated a media storm of unusual size for an indie Metroidvania-style game. That’s all thanks to the breakout success of the original game.
The original Hollow Knight exploded onto the scene in February 2017. Fans and critics alike were united on its appeal, praising the game for its depth of strategy, stunning cartoon-like art style, and dense world which rewards players for taking the path less traveled. Metroidvanias were already a dime-a-dozen then, but this one stood out from the rest of the pack—and it still does both in terms of quality and popularity. The game averages over 7000 players a week according to SteamCharts, which doesn’t factor in the various console releases in its total. All in all, the final number is likely well over 10,000 players every week seven years after release.
Silksong’s development cycle is confounding from the outside. The solid foundation of the first game makes for the perfect starting point, and in a world obsessed with annual releases and mega-franchises, Hollow Knight sticks out like a sore thumb. That’s part of the problem. It’s easy to assume that dozens of developers are hard at work getting the game in to tip-top shape for its eventual day one Game Pass release. That’s not the case. Team Cherry is comprised of three developers. Their games may not be as expansive as the latest Bethesda or Rockstar products, but every design decision takes time. That handcrafted, pixel-perfect attention to detail is what made Hollow Knight land like a warm hug on cold shoulders back in the day, and the sequel has to find a way to do even better.
We may all be going mad waiting for just the slightest taste of what’s to come, but if it’s going to top the the first game, then it’s best to trust the process.
