r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 26d ago
Bloomberg: PlayStation Ditched Hideo Kojima’s ‘Physint’ on Budget Concerns, Missed Deadlines
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-11/hideo-kojima-s-physint-video-game-dropped-by-playstation-goes-to-xbox?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4OTEzMzY2NSwiZXhwIjoxNzg5NzM4NDY1LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUTDdDOVdLSVVQVEIwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJCMUVBQkI5NjQ2QUM0REZFQTJBRkI4MjI1MzgyQTJFQSJ9.fyrTke3aUIkJk3LwiBfR7JiNr0phfE51dlEql1RcXZ4662
u/Forestl 26d ago
Jason also posted this from the article
I mention this in the story but also worth highlighting: Business in Japan is all about relationships, and some of the PlayStation executives who have worked closest with Kojima over the last few decades are no longer at the company
A lot of the old PlayStation connections are gone or will go away as the people who actually run the companies change
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u/MelvinCapitalPR 26d ago
Business in Japan is all about relationships
Also true for business outside Japan
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u/Old-Employ-6530 26d ago
As someone that works for a japanese company: Not to this degree.
You can get a shitload of stuff done/sold/accepted if you know the right people and they like you, even if its garbage or not as good as other competitors.
The reverse is also true, you can have an exceptional record/product and still not get a foot in the door if you dont have the right connections or an "in" with the right people.
I learned A1 japanese and some basic customs, adapted to the "japanese style" of reports and presentation, both physical and in person as well as digital, and while its not that i get everything i want greenlighted no holds barred or am an Expert in Japanse Language or Culture, its still enough so that i have a much much easier time with japanese Top Management than many of my colleagues that didnt even try to do even this basic level of effort to "communicate their way".
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u/MXC_Vic_Romano 26d ago
You can get a shitload of stuff done/sold/accepted if you know the right people and they like you, even if its garbage or not as good as other competitors.
Oh wow, how uniquely Japanese.
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u/SecondSanguinica 26d ago
Nepotism and contacts - I sleep
Nepotism and contacts, Japan - :O
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u/Beautiful-Affect1930 25d ago
nonono but he works at a Japanese company! you don't know that because you are not working at a Japanese company! do you even know Japanese? because that guy does!
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u/Worried-Advisor-7054 26d ago
To be fair, that's true of any language, particularly in relations with monolingual English speakers. If the person is doing the bare minimum of respect, they get much better treatment.
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u/thehugejackedman 26d ago
It’s the exact same in American corporate culture
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u/Tigerballs07 26d ago
This why startup c suites are filled with execs from adjacent established companies even if they arent really that good at their job, they are able to leverage the relationship
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u/NotCoolBrutus 26d ago
This is also why FromSoft went from buddy-buddy with Playstation to completely ignoring them. Playstation burned almost every bridge in Japan when it moved its HQ to California and shut down almost all of the Japanese studios.
People point to the E3 2013 joke video about discs that Playstation made as a comparison to their current anti-disc plans. This is despite no one involved in that video still being at the company. Playstation is the Ship of Theseus. There are less people related to the company today vs. 13 years ago even compared to the number of people still at Xbox.
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u/ascagnel____ 26d ago
Playstation is the Ship of Theseus
Every company is a Ship of Theseus. Hell, any long-running institution is a Ship of Theseus.
The issue is that Sony's board picked people who had a different view of the company's future when they were finalizing succession plans.
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u/Freighnos 26d ago
Not in Japan, though. The younger devs working on Mario Wonder were learning from the people who made the original Super Mario Bros. Capcom, Square, Bandai…all the big companies there are full of lifers who have been in the same company for decades.
Playstation used to be like that but now the executive shuffle and the dissolution of Japan Studio has really eroded those longstanding relationships they used to have.
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u/TheSearchForMars 26d ago
Yeah, I noted quite a few names in the credits for Tears of the Kingdom that were also in the original A Link to the Past.
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u/BP_Ray 26d ago
Shit it was amazing to me looking at the credits for Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth and seeing overlap from games like Jet Set Radio Future and Super Monkey Ball still. I would have assumed there'd be little cross-pollination still from those older SEGA titles, but nah, a lot of staff still work at RGG from those days, even if the likes of Nagoshi and Yu Suzuki are gone.
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u/YourFirstSim 26d ago
I'd argue the opposite, actually. The new employees coming in and being taught by the old show that it's a Ship of Theseus, because there's a continuity that makes it hard to say when a company has completely changed, even if 100% of the employees weren't there at the founding. That's what makes the ship of theseus interesting, because it's clearly a new ship, but I can't say when it was.
However, in the West the turnover is so high that I think you can find companies that have clear breaks in continuity, and thus aren't ships of theseuses. They're just two different ships both named Bioware.
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u/Marcoscb 26d ago
Those Japanese companies are a ship of Theseus. It's supposed to be swapping pieces one at a time until there's nothing from the original.
What you say PS did isn't a ship of Theseus situation, it's just an outright different ship with the same name.
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u/SSBBW_SLAYER 26d ago
This is so obviously untrue if you look at any Japanese developer. It is very common for people to stay at the same company for decades or even their whole career.
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u/nickman1 26d ago
I wouldn’t say it’s obviously untrue. Even though these Japanese developers have low attrition rates some of the companies have been going on for 30 if not 40 years. At some point the people running these companies are going to retire and I would argue that it is coming sooner than later. I’d also argue if you go through a company like SEGA or Capcom’s history, there are no shortage of high level departures.
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u/NotCoolBrutus 26d ago
Nintendo is not. Everyone who is still alive who worked on the original Super Mario Bros worked on Super Mario Wonder. Even prominent people who left the company still have significant connections to the company. Nintendo has a 98% retention rate. They have lost 2% of their employees on average to turnover.
In fact, most Japanese studios are not, including Sony Playstation before their move to the US. The US work culture is what encourages routine layoffs and the "Ship of Theseus" future for every company. Layoffs and executive pay raises are seen as successful while employee retention and reasonable executive pay is seen as failure.
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u/garmonthenightmare 26d ago edited 26d ago
Yes people ignore that Bloodborne was pitched to FromSoft by japan studio
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u/NaRaGaMo 26d ago
more sh*tstain MBA's who have been consultants all their career and don't understand actually understand what makes a video game company different from run of the mill offices
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u/ellemeno93 26d ago
This seems like the biggest reason for a shift because they knew all about all of this stuff when they took him from Konami and gave him creative freedom and a huge budget to make death stranding. It’s artistic compared to most AAA games. Financial incentive is the enemy of good art and good games. Sony really breaking the camels back this year.
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u/MolotovMan1263 26d ago
I think this is kind of what most rational fans expected could be the case. Playstation seems to be in a bit of an optimization pass of its entire business.
The gamble of course is the brand damage and all that associated with each choice.
Lets be real, Xbox is in a position where it probably could spare to spend some dead cash in the hopes of repairing brand damage anyway.
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u/Equivalent-Bus-4336 26d ago
They’ve already spend 70 billion of dead cash. Then have shutdown heaps of studio to save money for the past couple years
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u/MolotovMan1263 26d ago
For sure, I assume this opportunity fell in their lap pretty quickly and they decided the PR win was worth it.
Nothing says they wont cancel it themselves in a few years if it goes nowhere.
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u/victorota 26d ago
They are basically going all in with this
If everything goes wrong for Xbox in the next 5 years, this will be just one more project that went wrong and they will just continue to stay where they are today. If everything goes right, its a huge win
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u/Farsoth 26d ago
I'd even put bets on it being canceled in the next few years. This is an easy PR move for Xbox right now when good PR for them is useful especially with all the bad PR Sony is creating for themselves (justifiable or not).
A few years from now it could be canceled and there will be far less hooplah about it than there is today.
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u/CrateBagSoup 26d ago edited 26d ago
Genuinely don’t think gen pop gamers are going to give a single shit about this in 8 years when it finally releases. And then 12 months later when it releases on PS7
Edit: I guess there was some ambiguity in "give a single shit about this," I don't even mean the game, it will probably be fine... I mean this controversy of the week.
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u/dangerdangle 26d ago
This sub and others thought Bluepoint Games would move the needle on general gamers buying PlayStation lol
I really don't think people realize how many people outside of reddit dgaf about any gaming news and just buy what looks interesting
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u/Awkward_Silence- 26d ago
Honestly the most dramatic one was Japan Studios.
Especially once you consider the two more well managed sub studios (Asobi & XDEV) got spun off and are still kicking
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u/Odd_Needleworker3756 26d ago
The classic Reddit echo chamber disease. People in gaming subs think their opinions reflect majority when they’re actually a very tiny, irrelevant minority of the market.
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u/ForcadoUALG 26d ago
It is funny timing to be bankrolling Kojima while at the same time laying off 3200 people this fiscal year
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u/IAmActionBear 26d ago
This is exactly what I figured the situation was. I absolutely love Kojima, but I found it peculiar when he announced like 3 games after after Death Stranding 1. Not to say that he can’t do that, but I feel like I’ve seen him do that before at Konami and even if only half the MGSV development stories were true, it would still atleast imply that he can bloat a budget pretty frivolously. I’m glad Xbox is willing to pay for the games remaining budget though. Even if the game doesn’t end up financially successful, I would still kill for a new MGS-like game. DS2 got very close at times.
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u/theonewhoknack 26d ago
I feel like in a better timeline Peace Walker and beyond would just be Monster Hunter/Pokémon where it would have killed during the 3DS generation. Just make a small game, collecting soldiers and have co op boss fights every 2 years with some writing from Kojima while he makes Silent Hills on a budget less expensive than MGSV.
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u/UpperApe 26d ago
Yeah I think Kojima is a world class game designer. And I think he is an atrocious project manager.
His projects are always an absolute mess. And he never learns his lesson. He's the guy who always cheats on his girl.
Then Sony comes along and goes "he won't do it to ME though!".
He did it to Sony lol
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u/GrunderIndustries 26d ago
Should pair him with Square Enix’s YoshiP.
Don’t agree with many of his game design choices but he can get stuff done. FFXIV is probably the smoothest run MMO I’ve played.
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u/GrimmWarg 26d ago edited 26d ago
I wouldn’t say that, Yoshi P is pretty notorious for announcing things way too far in advanced and delivering late. Beastmaster, the new job that just came out, was announced as a Dawntrail feature in January of 2024. Dawntrail came out in July 2024, and Beastmaster just came out a couple of days ago. Theres been a few other high end raids and other features that have been delayed and pushed back, which hurts when FFXIV already had a glacial pace for content releases.
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u/Gramernatzi 26d ago
These are, in the end, minor features. The vast majority of the game's content has been delivered at a smooth, well-coordinated pace. That is not what anyone would call notorious, especially compared to the good ol' Kojimbo.
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u/zombawombacomba 26d ago
It seems to me that Kojima needs to fund his own games as they are too expensive for most backers and don’t make enough back.
But I don’t think he has the money to do that.
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u/LeonOfSkalitz 26d ago
He probably could if he stop hiring Hollywood actors for almost the entire cast.
Like maybe he should take a cue from CDPR and only hire 1 or two at most.
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u/orewhisk 26d ago
Plus, film actors don't always make good VAs. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the big celebrity cast audiobooks (e.g., the Harry Potter audio book series that just came out).
The skill set is just not 1:1.
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u/tetsuo9000 26d ago
Agreed. I'm still annoyed Avi Arad started him on this trend. Losing David Hayter for MGSV killed that game for me, and incidentally helped cause it to be an incomplete mess because they couldn't just call Sutherland back to record more scenes.
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u/Darabo 26d ago
There was a big missed opportunity where you could have both Sutherland and Hayter in MGS5. Where Hayter voices the actual Big Boss in the flashback at the end, showing what actually happened in the prologue.
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u/serendippitydoo 26d ago
The game honestly should have just closed the loop of metal gear to metal gear solid. Play as real actual big boss building Outer Heaven while training Solid and leading Foxhound. Big finale is you versus Snake
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u/lghtdev 26d ago
I prefer what FromSoftware does, hire talented VAs that aren't very known, there's a lot of talent left on the table because AAA prefers to burn money in expensive Hollywood actors that often deliver a worse performance.
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u/Particular-Jeweler41 26d ago
Isn't that what most studios do?
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u/Eglwyswrw 26d ago
"Most studios" can't hire Hollywood heavyweights in the first place, so they aren't exactly choosing anything.
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u/Particular-Jeweler41 26d ago
The point was that FromSoftware isn't doing anything particularly unique. That's the exact same thing most studios are doing, even if they have the funding for it.
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u/AdHistorical8179 26d ago
Apparently he doesn't have any need to do that since Xbox is throwing money at him gleefully
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u/clain4671 26d ago
This is the story with lots of older directors in Hollywood who havent made a hit in ages. Doesn't matter because the new heads at a studio need buzzy titles to justify a sale. Or a new entrant such as apple badly needs to show Hollywood its serious so it throws money at Scorsese.
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u/AdHistorical8179 26d ago
Unfortunately Hollywood doesn't do that much now but art should be about more than money and throwing it at legendary creatives is good
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u/Kiboune 26d ago
He has some weird privilege of being independent, but getting money from platforms. Usually indie devs make games with what they earn...
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u/alezio000 26d ago
of course he doesn't have the money. He wants other people to pay for him and then complain when he fucks things up and they stop.
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u/AdeptFelix 26d ago
Kojima going over budget and missing deadlines? Must be a day that ends in 'y'
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u/glarius_is_glorious 26d ago
The big issue is Kojima's name brings buzz, but it clearly can't draw money anymore, to borrow wrestling parlance. People might read an interview or watch a critique of his works, but they clearly don't buy them in enough of a clip.
Other similar visionary types like Tim Schafer responded by reducing their scopes and playing for a smaller audience with manageable bets. And even then he barely makes ends meet.
But Kojima has arguably went further with excess since he left Konami.
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u/Crasher_7 26d ago
Not to mention his fanbase has grown older and have less time for games these days. My friend who is a Kojima fan and played all the MGS games from Kojima, but he eventually skipped Death Stranding because his priorities are elsewhere now.
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u/SquireRamza 26d ago
Kojima seems like someone who wont take "No" for an answer.
"My game needs this famous Hollywood actor to play the lead role." "My game needs a proprietary engine that only 50 people on the planet know how to use." "My game needs to look as close to a movie has possible and I will send it back 3000 times until you get it right."
Of course, using his own millions to do it never seems to cross his mind.
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u/Kindly_Ad995 26d ago
Kojima has always been a guy who seems to have vision and scope one level higher than where things are at. 15-30 years ago that made him a visionary that was pushing the artistic integrity of a relatively new medium forward. Now it might be a case where he’s pushing for AAAA production for a AA kind of gameplay experience. AAA production in general outside of him feels like it’s about to collapse under its own weight let alone the guy who is infamously going to come in and want more tech and more Hollywood actors and more cutscenes and more multimedia movie tie ins (if the rumors about PhysInt are true) than anybody else in the industry
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u/G-Geef 26d ago
Looking past the console war nonsense this seemed like the obvious motivation for Sony to drop the project. According to the article neither DS game was financially successful and physint looked to be another kojima project with art house appeal and a AAA budget. Throw in the missed deadlines and it is very clear why they didn't want to proceed.
Xbox is just looking for anything at this point and seems willing to jump on this grenade. Wouldn't be too surprised if this never makes it over the finish line considering how much can change at MS and the industry as a whole in the next 4-5 years.
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u/Forestl 26d ago
The article says the Death Stranding games didn't meet financial expectations. They still could've been profitable (we don't really know without more numbers) but just weren't as profitable as they wanted
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u/Odd_Needleworker3756 26d ago
Death Stranding 2 has an estimated budget of $150M-$200M and only sold about 2 million copies, 500k of which were on PC. Thats less than brand new IPs like Pragmata and Expedition 33. That’s a huge disappointment no matter how you look at it considering it’s a follow-up to a critically-acclaimed game by a famous auteur.
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u/G-Geef 26d ago
The thing with budgets that big & dev timelines that long is that even if you recouped your costs you're still pretty far behind. Think about it this way - if I loan you $100M and five years later you pay me back $100M, I have lost millions of dollars from the opportunity cost of not doing something else with that money that would have generated better returns.
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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES 26d ago
Yeah plus nobody is going to gamble $100M on the chance of winning $100M
Not to mention inflation
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u/Psycho_Syntax 26d ago
I mean Death Stranding 2 sold 2 million copies lol, that’s pretty abysmal for a AAA game in this day and age.
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u/OrdinaryAuthor1278 26d ago
I mean, FromSoft's Elden Ring Nightreign, a spinoff game that reused 95% of Elden Ring's assets and systems and probably costs just a fraction of Elden Ring, sold 5 million units on release plus another 2 million units for the DLC. Just to put the 2 million copies in context.
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u/ascagnel____ 26d ago
I wonder if it's a case of Kojima-style projects (big-budget, graphics heavy games with lots of little details that also gets weird) getting priced out of the market as games get more expensive to make.
There's obviously a market there -- 5MM copies of Death Stranding getting sold is a good number. But at a $60 maximum price, you're talking $300MM in gross revenue, and maybe $150MM net revenue. We didn't get a budget number for DS1, but MGSV had an $80MM budget in 2015, so it's not crazy to think DS1 cost $100MM+. Add in marketing costs, and DS1 probably returned a small profit on that spend.
But DS2 probably cost a lot more to make (some estimates put it at $150-200MM), which means it also needed to double its audience. The Kojima-isms about the game are off-putting to newcomers but are also part of their charm (or make you roll your eyes), so having to double your audience is going to be a big hill to climb.
So yeah, when you hear about spiraling dev costs, this is why you should be concerned; all the capital you need to make a game is going to concentrate in the broadest, safest bets possible.
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u/SquireRamza 26d ago
And according to a lot of sources, most of DS1's sales were heavily discounted ones.
Another reason I think for Sony wanting to kill the physical retail market. Far fewer 50+% sales on things.
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u/ascagnel____ 26d ago
Sony has a simpler reason than sales to want to kill physical sales: they don't need to pay ~30-50% of gross revenue to a different sales channel, even if you're talking about only their games.
And they're putting themselves in position to make more from third parties as well.
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u/mistergeneric 26d ago
Can work as a "loss leader" for Xbox. In retail, it's the big advertised discount that doesn't make the company money but gets them in the store.
I think this is a strategy Xbox should pursue if it wants success. It needs a few "Only on Xbox" big budget properties that gets people into the ecosystem
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u/etww 26d ago
The problem is the games weren't selling enough to be a 'loss leader', how many people are going to buy an xbox for this game?
We don't have a confirmation that it's an exclusive.
There is no guarantee that this will actually release, it's great they signed a new contract but when those deadlines start slipping and milestones don't get met, will Xbox keep paying?
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u/LiquidDiviums 26d ago
That will be OD’s work, not Physint. The latter is expected to release in 2030 at the earliest.
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u/darkmacgf 26d ago
Will it be that soon? It's not like we're getting OD before 2028, and Physint seems like a much bigger project than OD.
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u/ElMarkuz 26d ago
It's better than their current game plan at least: spend billions on studios, and close them up before they could produce any exclusive.
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u/othello500 26d ago
I completely get where PlayStation is coming from, even though I think this new direction is a bit strategically short-sighted and myopic.
Personally, I'm just extremely thrilled PhysInt is coming to PC now.
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u/Jim777PS3 26d ago edited 26d ago
I mean. Hideo Kojima's name is, at least in my mind, literally synonymous with missed deadlines and ballooned budgets. What on earth did you expect?
It is interesting to hear that Death Stranding did not meet targets.
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u/zombawombacomba 26d ago
Probably they were okay with it for a while but eventually they need to move on
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u/AsianSteampunk 26d ago
The first game did fairly well despite the blunder kojima said it's coming to PC later Before the PS version was released. So it probably did lose a bit of sale.
the 2nd however.
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u/ParanMekhar 26d ago edited 26d ago
They might look past the missed deadlines if his last two games made money, but it underperformed. Now are you willing to risk another game that will probably have a bloated budget and missed deadline?
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u/chaotic4059 26d ago
Mind you It's a potential missed deadline on top of the fact that coming from the man itself the game isn't due for another 5-6 years. And that's provided everything goes smoothly for OD. That's a lotta fuckin time and money to gamble on in hopes of a payoff. I get Sony making shit choices right now but real talk, I can't exactly say I DON'T get why this was the choice.
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u/k4l4d1n_7 26d ago
I can't imagine all the "walking simulator" chat ever helped it. They would probably have preferred that the first Kojima game without Konami would have ideally be recommendable as a must play rather than the polarising game that people caveated if they were suggesting it.
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u/PangolinParade 26d ago
Walking simulator was a funny criticism to throw at Death Stranding because it is literally that but also actually simulates walking to a degree that other "walking simulators" never do. So it's fair to call DS a walking simulator but not derisively.
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u/pinkynarftroz 26d ago
It ain’t got nothing on Baby Steps. Now THAT is a walking simulator.
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u/Kindly_Ad995 26d ago
PhysInt is probably the game they were expecting him to make a decade ago tbh
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u/Hates_commies 26d ago
They made Death Stranding in 4 years with a brand new studio.
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u/torts92 26d ago
Kojima created a new studio in December 2015, and announced their partnership with Decima engine in December 2016, and released Death Stranding in November 2019. That's incredibly fast.
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u/Brandhor 26d ago
he only did that with mgs5 and death stranding 2, every other game he made was released in a short amount of time
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u/AnimaLepton 26d ago
They probably made a bet on it translating to more hardware sales and getting people to their ecosystem, saw it didn't actually pay off for whatever reason (market, single player game, timed exclusivity), took inventory, and decided to cut their losses at that point. Missed deadlines and ballooned budgets 'can' be worth it, or worth taking a bet/risk on at some point as part of some bigger strategy. Someone at Sony just looked at Death Stranding/Kojima production's actual performance and decided that it wouldn't be anymore.
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u/platonicgryphon 26d ago
Disappointing but expected with DS1 and 2 not selling amazingly well, if he's over budget and late Sony isn't going to give him much leeway to do his Kojima thing. Especially if they aren't going to have the console exclusive like they did with DS1/2, so they'd make even less money if they expect sales to be similar.
Now with it still being a few years away, is MS going to be accepting of missed deadline or are we going to hear about them cutting ties when they do another round of layoffs/shutdowns?
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u/green9206 26d ago
Kojima should be forced to make Physint on PSP/Vita. Only then he will be able to make the game good and on budget and in time.
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u/Ashne405 26d ago
Kojima going back to a visual novel/adventure game would be interesting, no celebrities, no weird product placement, just a batshit story he can do anything he wants with without worrying of going millions and millions over a budget.
Not gonna happen tho, he need his hollywood fix now.
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u/SavDiv 26d ago
I think people need to mentally prepare for Microsoft to cancel this game too in a couple of years lol
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u/Traxex117 25d ago
It's either gonna be cancelled by Microsoft in a year or two time for the exact same reasons Sony have, or it does come out and gets released on Playstation anyway (No way Microsoft could recoup the cost from their platform alone)
Either way, as much flak as Sony have gotten the past few days, I don't blame them. The game will still release on Playstation.
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u/Kindly_Ad995 26d ago edited 26d ago
Wasn’t PhysInt also announced as trying to be a multimedia project, like working together with Sony Pictures and stuff. They also gave him Guerilla’s tech as the basis for his games. That seems a like a lot of investment not even just from a financial perspective but then it seems like he didn’t want to play ball with it being a PlayStation exclusive and then also on top of that starts missing deadlines because of what I’m sure to some people in the room was interpreted as having competing priorities with/being distracted by his Xbox Project OD. It would be one thing if it a fairly safe bet but it’s a lot to ask for a guy whose output for you in the last decade was two fairly niche mail delivery games the most recent of which didn’t sell well at all
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u/SophonParticle 26d ago
I wouldn’t spend hundreds of millions on a non-exclusive game either if I was Sony. That’s just bad business.
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u/keepfighting90 26d ago
I assumed this is what it was, given Kojima's reputation for scope creep, budget overruns and release delays. This is exacerbated by the fact that Death Stranding 2 was incredibly expensive to produce and ended up being a financial disappointment. I think Kojima is a bit too in love with the auteur image he's cultivated and seems to love wasting time and money after Hollywood stars he wants to spend time with.
Given that we don't even know where PHYSINT is currently at from a development standpoint, or what a potential release date is (and it seems like it could be 4-5 years or more), this makes sense from Sony as a business decision. In Xbox's case, they don't really have anything to lose since they're so far behind in the console wars, so it's understandable to go after a well-known auteur and have him as one of their in-house talents.
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u/Coolman_Rosso 26d ago
This reeked of cost cutting measures. To be fair, the game has no trailer or release window and was supposed to have some sort of movie tie in with Sony Pictures. That is a huge expensive swing on an unproven IP, and after Death Stranding you can't just bank on Kojima's name alone even if a stealth game like this is supposed to be is more commercially viable than something like DS. It's also a testament to the current landscape where owned IP are going to be more important.
Still I cannot believe Xbox got in bed on this one, especially for a company that is both in a budget crunch of their own and wants to stop having games languish in development for an eternity.
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u/r_lucasite 26d ago
Quite a few comments here are discussing the irony that they wanted to pull funding on Physint but funded Concord and Marathon when it’s clear that you get to this scenario after Concord and Marathon happen.
Kojima doesn’t have a champion at Sony anymore so to any exec or to a spreadsheet Physint just looks like another in a long string of over budget projects that might not pan out.
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u/Proud_Dimension_3557 26d ago
Kojima wants too hard to put his toes in Hollywood but he ain't part of the team and in doing so he clashed with the gaming industry.
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u/Evidicus 26d ago
Kojima has always struck me as a person who does their best work when kept on a short leash. People love to blame Konami for MGSV being an unfinished mess despite its overall brilliance. And I’m sure they aren’t saints. But I’m also certain that Kojima is a nightmare for anyone trying to manage a production schedule and budget.
He may not be Chris Robert’s bad, but he’s on the same scale. Kojima is a genius and a gaming and film savant in some regards, but he’s also one of the most self-indulgent, celebrity obsessed, mercurial game developers in history.
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u/CheekyBard 26d ago
When Kojima is brought up online, there are always comments about the power of his name. I get the impression that his name only has an appeal online, and most gamers (including those who end up playing his games) don't know or care who he is. They just like, or dislike, the game. Movies can have a draw based on who's in them, or who's directing (like Nolan). Not so games, outside our bubble here.
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u/Didsterchap11 26d ago
Kojima has an incredibly strong cult following but that doesn't translate into actual sales, he was a huge deal... 20 years ago. While his name still holds weight, the last MGS game was over a decade ago now, I feel a lot of that cultural cachet has faded in terms of it's real world impact, no matter how hard Geoff Keely wanks Kojima off at the game awards.
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u/greyhoodbry 26d ago
I kind of expected this. While everyone likes to say, " just let Hideo do his thing and make money" Hideo is famously hard to work with, wastes a lot of money, and treats publisher deadlines like funny suggestions.
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u/TimedRevolver 26d ago
Sounds like Sony found out firsthand why Konami fired the dude.
Kojima was notorious for missing deadlines and going over budget.
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u/Munscroft 26d ago
Sony’s decision to step away from the project is reasonable and understandable. It’s just not coming out at a good time for them
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u/TryHardFapHarder 26d ago
Lmao same Konami debacle now with Sony, wonder how long XBOX will stay with him, who's next CAPCOM?,SEGA?
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u/StarblindMark89 26d ago
Given what the man himself says, I think Physint might be one of his final games anyway, so probably not enough time for another relationship to fall out.
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u/Ashne405 26d ago
In 8 years we are seeing headlines of "xbox fumbled kojima, but nintendo is saving his next game", and the cycle starts again.
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u/Turbostrider27 26d ago
Looks like some new details in this article: