If Hideo Kojima Games Aren't Safe, No Games Are Safe

Some surprising news broke yesterday when it was announced that Physint, the next game from Kojima Productions, was being dropped by PlayStation Studios, only for Xbox to step in and sign it instead.

The news was first announced by a tweet from PlayStation:

It's odd that PlayStation Studios would make a decision like that, given the success Kojima's games have always had on their platforms (for a while there Metal Gear was very much a PlayStation thing, and PlayStation either published or had a hand in publishing both Death Stranding games). It’s even odder that, of all the companies out there who could swoop in to publish Physint instead, it would be the embattled Xbox (already working with Kojima on OD), which followed Sony’s post a minute later with their own announcement:

After which Kojima added his own statement, which added a little more context:

As confirmed earlier through our official channels, in mid-June of this year, we unexpectedly received notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the PHYSINT project. PHYSINT is an important project both to me personally and to KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS. Determined to keep the project alive, we have spent the last three months searching tirelessly for a new partner. In the course of seeking advice and pursuing negotiations with people across many fields, we found in XBOX a partner with whom we share a common vision for the future, and we have decided to team up with them once again. Please rest assured that development of PHYSINT, our genre-defining action-espionage title, is ongoing and will continue moving forward.

What's most striking to me here is that this is not (broadly) the first time something like this has happened to Hideo Kojima. The Metal Gear creator famously split with Konami after "gag orders, vague statements...and insults to Kojima's legacy", a break-up that killed off the mainline Metal Gear Solid series and sunk cult classic horror demo PT (and the Silent Hill game it was promoting) as collateral damage along with it.

And while there's nothing to suggest this move by PlayStation is acrimonious--Sony's cordial "we continue to have great admiration" statement suggests otherwise--I just find it extremely weird that for whatever reason a major publisher has once again found a way to not publish a Hideo Kojima video game, surely one of the safest bets in the entire industry.

Like, what is going on here? Not to revisit old news, but couldn't Konami have just buried whatever personal beef they had with the man to keep making millions of dollars on a regular schedule? And what possible reason could Sony have to offload Physint, outside of the fact everything that company has done in 2026 has been a colossal disaster? Was there no long tail to its revenue? Was it not live-service enough?

I get that the circumstances are entirely different here than with Konami, but the fact the end result--a major publisher turning down money--is the same has really got to me. If you ever needed a reminder that these are tumultuous times for the entire industry, look no further than one of the planet's three console manufacturers dumping a Hideo Kojima video game!

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AftermathLuke Plunkett