GG have generally made good, not great games.

Horizon looks far more interesting than Killzone ever did, but there is a lot to find out about the game still. Of course you can say the same about Zelda, but that is a known quantity to an extent. Right now, my biggest concern with Horizon is the combat. As far as I know, we only know that Aloy has a bow, and can construct different types of arrow, and that she can use bits that fall off the robo-dinos as temporary weapons. There are some simple stealth mechanics as well, but that will be a very small part of it I imagine.

Horizon will have the better graphics, unless Zelda comes out on NX as well, in which case it may be close.

Metascore, I will go with Zelda. Sales too, again, especially if there is an NX version as well. Wouldn't surprise me if lots of Zelda fans bought both.

Let's see

Artstyle: Zelda >>> Horizon

Graphics: Horizon >>> Zelda

Sales: Horizon > Zelda (WiiU) but Zelda (WiiU + NX) >> Horizon

Nintendo EPD >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Guerrilla Games

Metacritic: Zelda > Horizon

Hands down, Horizon will win both in metacritic and in sales. The Nintendo brand is on a sharp decline.

If Zelda U is Wii U exclusive, then it will definitely lose

PS4 is stronger than the Wii U so of course the graphics would be better than Zelda

Metacritic wise, I'm not sure

Metacritic: Horizon Zero Dawn > Zelda U

Possible, but unlikely. For all we know the new Zelda could be a shitty game which gets a deserved 30 on Metacritic. But the same is trie for Horizon. And for all we know, we expect that both companies pushed a lot of resources into the titles to create quality games. But surprises are always possible, we also thought a long time that the Order probably would be a quality title.

Sales: Horizon Zero Dawn > Zelda U

Very unlikely. Yes, PS4 sells a lot better than WiiU. But as we know install base is only of little relevance - strong followers of an IP will buy the platform to play the game. That this works even on WiiU is proven by Mario Kart.

So we have a new Zelda-entry that looks so far promising against a new IP, which also looks promising. But Zelda proved it can sell mutiple millions, and it consistently does through the main titles. Horizon may sell 1-3 million, I expect Zelda to sell 3-5 million.

Graphics: Horizon Zero Dawn > Zelda U

Well ... First of all this is something we cannot really measure. We can compare screenshots and discuss this or that. Even worse, the style is largely different and this leads to focus on different technical aspects. And some aspects are very difficult to measure. How many objects are visible while frame rate is stable? How far the popin is visible. Which effects are used? And so on. Comparison is practically impossible.

That said, Zelda is on WiiU which is technically inferior to PS4. So if the graphic of Horizon in most aspects isn't better, than it will be a relly big disappointment.

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You forgot one category: Costs vs. revenue. We probably will have difficulties to get numbers for these games, but it would be interesting how big the expenses were on the development of each title.

Looks and graphics are already a given for Horizon. But critically it could as well be this gen the last of us as a mid 80 game. At this moment it looks as the former. As for Zelda yeah I didn't see anything so I don't know could be the best Zelda game or not it will score above 85 for sure. From what I have seen though it'a not able to compete from a graphical standpoint. Since cellshaded will only get you so far.

It's always fun to speculate, but regarding the meta score we just have too little information on either game to make any kind of educated prediction. As far as sales it's basically the power of Ninty's 1st party offerings vs the huge install base of PS4. Should be interesting.

Graphically, it's hard to compare a WiiU game to a top-notch PS4 exclusive on a technical level, although I personally prefer the look of Zelda so far. I have no doubt that both games will be beautiful.

Difficult to say. They are the two games I'm looking forward to the most.

I've talked to some people, but from what I've heard, there's quite a few people awaiting what Horizon will do. After Killzone: Shadowfall that's understandable. Zelda games always score very high on Metacritic, and don't underestimate the Wii U, the attach rate of games are insane on that system. Mario Kart 8 is approaching 6 million units. That equivalent to a game selling around 18 million copies on the PS4. If Horizon does just ''decent'' and sells 3-4 million copies on the PS4 and Zelda U does amazing and sells around 4-5 million copies. It's not impossible...

Graphics: I think this is subjective, especially if the art style and production values are totally different. However, technically speaking I think Horizon wins hands down with everything they have thrown at the game.

Metabolic:

Neither studio has proven they can do open world games. We already have a thread saying Nintendo delayed ZeldaU due to the world being boring between dungeons. Both games have question marks looming over their heads, but from what I know and my experience with both developers I know:

Nintendo know how to make awesome dungeons create amazing boss fights.

GG know how to make decent fps gameplay, they have hired a more than competent writer, and last but not least they hired people from CDP that made one of the best openworld games this gen with amazing quests and lore.

If Nintendo manage to sort out these rumoured problems it will score well.

If GG can bring together the best qualities from their studio, the FO writer and team and the CDP quest dudes team, they might have one of the best new IPs of this gen on their hands.

Depending on how things unravel, I think it is possible either can fail or succeed. Winning by a point or 2 is not big enough a deal.

Sales:

I'm not going to look at sales across 2 gen launches. We are comparing one game on one system against another game on another system. The way Sony are doing remasters and relaunches etc we could argue the same for Horizon and then compare sales again in 4 years. It's all too complicated, so I prefer keeping it simple just keeping it current gen.

The most ZeldaU can sell is 11Mil copies, by every WiiU owner buying one. If half the userbase by one, that's 6Mil copies. Looking at Super Mario 3D world, I think ZeldaU will probably get around 4-5mil sales at the most if it reviews well and is not buried under a new system launch hype like GT6 was.

Horizon on the other hand looks like a game that will have huge marketing push and will be released on a system that will probably have a userbase of +40mil. If it reviews well and Sony market it, I think it could end with sales of 6-7mil.

Horizon looks cool but it has a very odd story. You're basically a futuristic cavewoman, living in a world with robotic dinosaurs. It doesn't matter how great the gameplay, visuals or sound is... that's a hard sell. Zelda on the other hand is the stuff of legend at this point and won't have that working against it.