Frontier Developments released Planet Zoo 2 on October 13, 2026, and the job is the 2019 one: build a habitat, stock it with animals, keep the budget upright. It’s out on PC through Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. The Standard Edition costs $49.99 and the Deluxe Edition $64.99, which adds six animal species and some exclusive signs, per the Steam page.
Planet Zoo 2 has more than 130 species, and for the first time some of them swim or fly. That means aquariums and aviaries, built with the piece-by-piece tools from the first game. Frontier’s launch announcement calls the animals “the most true-to-life representation of animals in the series to date,” and points to fur, feathers and scales.
What wildlife reserves add outside the zoo walls
The bigger change to the management loop sits outside the zoo. Wildlife reserves are conservation sites around the world where you raise animals and then release them into an ecosystem you restore. Each reserve is a project with its own map, and you run them alongside your zoos.
Career, Franchise and Sandbox modes return. Franchise is the online mode, where you trade animals with other players and work toward community goals. A new Planet Hub, which is one screen for your whole network of zoos and reserves, ties them together. There is also a first-person camera, so you can walk through your own zoo or through other players’ builds from the Frontier Workshop.
The first Planet Zoo came out on PC in November 2019 and sold more than a million copies in about six months. It reached PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S as a Console Edition in March 2024. The sequel skips that wait and lands on all three on the same day, which by Frontier’s own record counts as brisk.
A Mixed score and a patch already out
Steam user reviews stood at Mixed on October 16, with 67% positive out of 3,012. Frontier has already posted Update 1.0.4. Its notes list several crash fixes and a fix for animals escaping their habitats by mistake. FSR and DLSS settings now work, and keybindings no longer reset when you open the Hub or animal trading. The notes do not say whether these are the complaints behind the score, so I won’t either.
If you still play the first game, you don’t need to switch today. Wait for another patch and a steadier review score, then pick it up through Frontier’s Planet Zoo 2 site or your platform’s store.
