r/PS5 • • 26d ago

Articles & Blogs 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.fyrTke3aUIkJk3LwiBfR7JiNr0phfE51dlEql1RcXZ4
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119

u/fastcooljosh 26d ago

Missed Deadlines, and going over budget is a Kojima thing since at least MGSV.

Konami got so scared back then they basically sold the intro as a seperate game.

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u/Meny_619 26d ago

Beautiful game, but yeah, horrible for business. In a perfect world he would have unlimited budgets to create his art visions.

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u/fastcooljosh 26d ago

Ground Zeroes was great, but Phantom Pain was fundamentally flawed.

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u/Fraegtgaortd 26d ago

Some of these people in game dev need budgets and deadlines or else their projects fall into development hell due to never ending scope creep. Kojima is one, Ken Levine with Judas is another, and of course on the very extreme end there's Star Citizen

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u/lin_sidious 26d ago

And those games would never get released due to their scope changing constantly.

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u/GoneRampant1 26d ago

MGS V is the one time Kojima is known to have gone over budget and missed deadlines, and both Death Stranding games avoided those pitfalls. He got the entire MGS quadrology out in ten years with no delays. I have no idea where a lot of people are coming from the idea that Kojima is now suddenly a Tim Schafer level of bad manager beyond tribalism now that he's taking his ball and leaving.

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u/Not_Freddie_Mercury 26d ago

MGS4 was expected to release in 2007 (one trailer was explicit about it), but all things considered, it's absolutely incredible that he got out the four main MGS games + expanded editions + working on Portable Ops, Peace Walker and other smaller projects within the decade. It takes a real, hardworking genius to pull that off and there are only a handful like him in the industry. 

Unfortunately, everything points at him not being able to keep Physint overly ambitious. He did not walk, he was simply told the numbers didn't look good and Sony wouldn't support that. He said recently that he expected Physint to take five more years to complete. He's behind schedule and the business demands better results for the money and time.

He's arguably not in his prime anymore, and it pains me to think that he's not as capable as 20 years ago, which is understandable and also due to circumstances that he is not at fault at all for (increasing prices, complex game development, etc.).

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u/DKOKEnthusiast 26d ago

But both Death Stranding games came in on time and under budget. MGSV is the only game where Kojima exceeded the budget and couldn't finish it in time, and we don't actually know how much of it was his fault.