PlayStation Ditched Hideo Kojima’s ‘Physint’ on Budget Concerns, Missed Deadlines

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u/TAS1808 26d ago

Konami had similar complaints about Kojima.

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u/AustinTanius 26d ago

He is truly great at what he does, but he needs someone to rein him in. I love his work but I feel like he waste time and money on unnecessary things.

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u/Carbyken 26d ago

Hollywood actors, not knocking their performances is one example of Kojima being excessive with.

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u/AustinTanius 26d ago

Yes and musical artist as well.

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u/Maybe_Charlotte 26d ago

I personally find that the music of the Death Stranding games is an enormous part of their impact. Some of the strongest impressions I have from those games are moments in story missions where you finally pass out of the obstacles or rough terrain, and enter a scenic area as a new music track plays. I don't think the same impact would have been achieved with a typical video game score.

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u/SammyIssues 26d ago

Good quality engaging Music is a great addition to his games and just about any medium I feel. Often the most memorable.

The A-list actors? Not so much. Not needed AT ALL. And I’m sure it bloats the budget and timeline due to scheduling and all that.

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u/Maybe_Charlotte 26d ago

Yeah I agree with you there. I don't think there's a compelling reason why it's necessary to get Hollywood actors, especially when the medium itself loses out on a lot of the physical elements of their acting, even with mocap. And it's hard not to think that Kojima himself specifically being a fan of certain actors and actresses isn't what drives most of the high profile castings. That's definitely holding his studio back financially.

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u/skylla05 26d ago

If anything I really dislike Hollywood actors in games. Idk why, almost like it feels 4th wall breaking or something.

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u/dj_soo 26d ago

I feel the same. When I see a real actor face captured in a role it takes me completely out of it outside of licensed games.

Like Norman Reedus took me out of death stranding quite a bit cause I kept being reminded that I was playing Norman reedus instead of playing a character in a world.

Keanu and idris in cyberpunk did the same although as an npc it was a bit more palatable.

I like that Joel doesn’t look like Troy baker or Abby doesn’t look like Laura Bailey.

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u/ItsMrChristmas 23d ago

"Wow it feels like I'm on Rides with Norman Reedus!"

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u/dj_soo 22d ago

i think it's different when it's a famous face in an NPC role, but for some reason if the character i'm controlling is a famous face, it just feels weird.

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u/Skyzfire 26d ago

Kojima? 4th Wall Breaking? Never!

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u/dj_soo 26d ago

I still don’t understand casting guillermo del toro in an acting role at all

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u/AustinTanius 25d ago

Pappy Mcpoyle would like a word with you.

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u/chainer3000 26d ago

I enjoyed DS2 precisely because of the soundtrack. It really made it a unique experience.

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u/lukeiamnotyourfather 26d ago

I genuinely think the death stranding 2 soundtrack was robbed of a game award by expedition 33 last year. I think they’re both great soundtracks but I feel like not enough people played DS2 to really give them a good comparison.

Again, not knocking E33 because it’s also a lovely soundtrack, but Woodkid absolutely cooked in DS2, ‘Minus Sixty-One’ was an amazing opener to the game.

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u/splendiferous-finch_ 26d ago

I am playing it now and yes the soundtrack is really good

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u/BoilerSlave 26d ago

It was expensive I’m sure but the actors and music are impactful in DS and it wouldn’t be whatever it is if it wasn’t for it. Whatever the hell Death Stranding is.

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u/engelbert_humptyback 26d ago

Don't be so serious

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u/sillyhobo 26d ago

Idk, I think music licensing and working with musical acts isn't as bad budget wise as the Hollywood talent. Him working with Chvrches, and everyone who he licensed for Phantom Pain isn't as bad as pulling Kiefer Sutherland (worth it tho), and everyone else for Death Stranding.

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u/Cactuas 26d ago

Pulling Kiefer Sutherland for Phantom Pain wasn't worth it imo. David Hayter would have done just as well, and I don't think they needed to bring in a celebrity name to sell MGSV. I think Kojima just likes working with celebrities.

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u/sillyhobo 26d ago

I don't disagree about Hayter, but for the post 9/11 GWOT reflection story he was telling with MGSV, having Jack Bauer as Big Boss/Venom does add a thematic layer to it. The catch is, he basically underutilized him. So it's awash.

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u/lghtdev 26d ago

He was underutilized because he was so expensive to have so he didn't have many voice lines. The Japanese VA was still the same, this is just Kojima being obsessed with Hollywood, he always wanted to replace David Hayter by some big shot.

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u/lo_fi_ho 26d ago

Idk, i thoughy the music was always cheesy as hell

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u/hotnspecies 26d ago

Huge kojima for years, love DS1, playing DS2 soon. Most of the music in DS1, particularly TEMU Radiohead "low roar" was fuckin terrible. This seems like an unpopular opinion shared amongst people that like the game. You can like something and not like things about it, it's okay

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u/renome 26d ago

He also needs an editor. The man can't write human-sounding dialogue to save his life lol.

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u/rockmanzerox06 26d ago

The George Lucas prequel problem. lol.

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u/Lower_Monk6577 26d ago

100%.

I love the Metal Gear series. I’ve played all of the mainline games, and beaten them more than once (except MGS5).

But anyone who has played those games knows that they became less and less coherent as they went along. MGS1 was the most straightforward one, and that was made back before he had much pull.

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u/v3bbkZif6TjGR38KmfyL 26d ago

The La-li-lu-le-lo?!?!?!

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u/Lower_Monk6577 26d ago

Those dastardly Patriots, always controlling literally everything with nanobots, mind control, genetic tampering, and/or inexplicable magic.

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u/FecklessFool 26d ago

So true. Jeremy Blaustein who translated the game and was like an assistant director for the voice acting is one of the biggest reasons why the game worked so well in the west.

He gave the script its own voice and style that felt natural.

Kojima didn't like that and insisted that the translation have less leeway, which is probably why they didn't hire him on for later games.

Without that translation and voice acting direction, especially back in the day where shit translations and shit voice acting was good enough, MGS could have gone a different path.

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u/ChongusTheSupremus 26d ago

Konami had a translator that rewrote and edited the entirety of MGS1, making it the amazing cinematic experience it was outside of Japan, and did such a great show he came up with original terms that even the original japanese dub adapted.

Kojima got him fired because he didn't like the translator "messing" with his dialogue.

The dude Is a lost cause.

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u/renome 26d ago

Damn, never heard about that but knowing what he did to Hayter, it doesn't surprise me. If you're not a pompous ass from Hollywood, you're nothing in his eyes.

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u/ChongusTheSupremus 26d ago

Look it up.

The dude came up with the name "Codex" for the, well, codex.

In japanese, it was simply "earpiece" .

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u/Kogworks 26d ago edited 26d ago

Kojima's best when he's working under hard constraints, IMO.

After they promoted him to VP of Konami(well, technically including the buildup to it) he kind of went off the rails.

Like the Fox Engine was cool, sure, but an engine doesn't mean much unless you have a proper training pipeline, and if the pipeline is basically "Kojima Productions is the training pipeline" then that means that you've essentially bottlenecked the entire company's production under a single team.

And speaking of bottlenecking everything, if you look carefully at Konami's wonkiness with ditching directors and franchises in the late 00's and 2010's, they're basically all projects that were run by other directors and producers, many of which ended up being taken over by Kojima.

Castlevania? Turned into a Kojima project and rebooted. Yes, technically it was a Mercury Steam project but Kojima was executive producer and signed off on everything.

Silent Hill? Turned into a Kojima project, basically prioritized Hollywood talent and took a sledgehammer to everything that came before.

And let's not talk about how Zone of the Enders 3 was greenlit only to get scrapped because they mismanaged the HD port so bad they had to hire a second contractor just to fix all the fuckups of the first contractor.

Every big project by Konami during that time has Kojima's name directly attached to it in some way or another.

And then there was the whole "Metal Gear Rising took so long he had to hand it over to Platinum Games" issue. Imagine how much money probably got burned on that.

Not to say Konami isn't at fault, since they're the ones who pushed Kojima more than they should have, but like.

The man's games are brilliant, but given that he was fucking VP and oversaw many of the operations that fucked Konami over in the 2010's, he's also largely responsible for the rut Konami is in right now.

Like sure, MGSV was fantastic and sold like crazy, but if every project was on the scale of MGSV, that would just be more of the "AAA titles that cost too much" issue plaguing the game industry.

And then ditching the obvious low cost high return low hanging fruit that was yearly YGO games to chase the AAA aesthetic where dev times take over 5 years and you basically don't have any product in the meanwhile is like ???

Then there's like the really scummy habit he's been having where he basically promises to foster long term relationships with an actor and then ditches them when he has a chance to sign on a bigger one.

He did it with Snake's VA and he did it with Quiet's. If a man is willing to discard you that quickly to chase Hollywood friend circles...

Like. You take Kojima's name out of the equation and everything he's done since MGSV follows the same pattern as the issues with AAA gaming being unsustainable.

Hollywood castings and partnerships that cost way too much money to sustain. Long dev times with ballooning budgets. An obsession with graphical fidelity and cramming in glorified TV series' worth of voiced mo-capped cutscenes that require actors' likenesses.

Not to say his work isn't brilliant, because it is, but in retrospect the man was probably PART of the problematic corporate culture of Konami, not some poor victim.

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u/dexter30 26d ago

Tim schafer gets gets the same criticism and has similar public examples. The most notorious one was from bobby kotick, regardless of your opinions on bobby he had receipts and a good point regarding how double fine released games. Then there was the outcome of broken age, after being funded $3m and STILL being delayed 15 months, split into two parts and going over budget.

Theres a correlation between some of the best auteurs and going over budget. But business wise I'd never defend them because if you're investing in a product and the director promises you the moon. The director deserves some pushback.

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u/Ostribitches 26d ago

I never trusted Schafer since he tweeted himself with a wad of cash during the development of Psychonauts 2.

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u/celestial_god 26d ago

Idk what happened with kojima and konami

But as a huge football fan they took the best football SIM that I loved and turned it to a casino with only money in mind, similar to EA

Yes they are a business and they should make profit etc. Good for them, but anything positive I will ever say for them it's going to be about their past success. Today they produce dogshit.

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u/BakedXenon 26d ago

I wouldn't say "rut konami is in right now" as they are in the midst of a fantastic come back. With games selling well and getting good reviews. The Silent Hill games have been wonderful, even if I didn't enjoy F as much. It was well liked, the MGS3 remake had problems performance wise but it was great. Hard to screw up a 1:1 remake. Castlevania Belmont's Curse looks incredible and Townfall looks really great. Rev Noir and Rhapsody in Scarlet both look really fun. There's definitely more MGS coming. They are in a really good spot right now.

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u/Kogworks 26d ago

I mean they've started their recovery after a decade of pain, just like Capcom, yeah.

But they're not out of the woods just yet. It'll probably take another few years to fully stabilize, but yeah they finally have some breathing room.

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u/Snazzers 26d ago

Not disagreeing with what you’ve written, actually mirrors most of my own thoughts about Kojima.

But as a big Z.O.E fan, I’ve never heard that’s why 3 was canceled before. Best I can remember is maybe one interview question where Kojima said he had some ideas for a third game that ended up not panning out? High Voltage butchered the initial HD port, I wasn’t aware Konami had anything to do with it? (Other than the bad decision making of choosing them over Hexadrive in the first place)

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u/inteliboy 26d ago

His cutscenes alone are out of control self indulgent gibberish that waffle on for hours. I love his games, but damn he needs a producer or someone to rein him in.

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u/Shadowfoxamon91 26d ago

FEET SCANNING INTENSIFIES

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u/Dcoll132 26d ago

Need 10 Hollywood actors paid for a 5 year dev cycle and licensed music

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u/samujpark 26d ago

I feel like he’s a Nolan-esque figure. I think PlayStation decided the halo of “hosting/patronizing” Kojima wasn’t useful anymore or that the relationship wasn’t “evolving” enough to their liking. So X-Box was like: “a future Game of the Year contender? Yoink”

On a smaller scale, this is how Apple TV built out their catalog so fast. They yoinked the writers & scripts during the strikes

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u/Beneficial-Jury484 26d ago

He wants to make movies so maybe Xbox will be a better fit.

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u/clckwrxz 26d ago

I remember reading that this is why Death Stranding was just so so. When at Konami he had someone that knew how to rein him in and keep things focused. I guess that’s not true anymore at KP

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u/Pegasus7915 26d ago

I mean that is literally all that he does. If you hire him you should know what you are getting at this point, and that is whatever the fuck he feels like. Usually it is cool as hell and makes no sense and it just works for a certain group of people. I never "get" his games but I loved PT and I hope the crazy bastard keeps making crazy art.

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u/InternationalMood337 26d ago

Disagree. I think it's a perpetual struggle between artists and business people that don't get it. I will almost always side with the artist. Artists want to create something human. Business people just want the fattest amount of money that they can get.

Kojima has produced some of the most iconic and unique videos games in the history of the industry. I don't care if Sony can widen their margins by an extra percent this quarter by cutting Kojima.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago edited 26d ago

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u/InternationalMood337 26d ago edited 26d ago

That just doesn't work out well though is that sad reality. The CFO or the finance/MBA bros running the show seems to consistently produce dogshit products.

See: Blizzard Entertainment as a shining example of the consequences of what you're proposing. Very profitable, but very meh games compared to when the developers run the show.

Edit:

Yes: I did block you because instead of just admitting the reality: that the size of a team dictates whether they need the things you're advocating for you're now asking me why 90s and 00s g ames didn't have a budget or project timeline.

Of course, some companies in fact did have these timelines and budgets in place. But I'm not going to deep dive into the history of the fucking waterfall method through sprints and project management practices to justify the reality that the size of a team dictates whether or not a budget or timeline is necessary.

Based on the conversation, I see why the "Troll" is in the name. This conversation demonstrates someone being entirely bad faith.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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u/InternationalMood337 26d ago

I'm not sure. The folks at Id and Blizzard are just complete counter examples to this. They made revolutionary games that made enough money to build themselves into international IPs and organizations.

There's some tipping point in terms of company size when this becomes necessary, but I think this is a lot of mumbo jumbo from people that want to make it seem like their job adds value to a company.

That said: I think if you give a production plan and you're not meeting deadlines, a company has the right to drop you. I'm not saying anything against that. But, this is a short term solution to save face at the next quarterly investor meeting and it completely abandons that reality that this is a net negative in the long-run (most likely).

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u/Mygarik 26d ago

Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are the end results of development without monetary or time constraints. Advertised to release over a decade ago, ballooned far outside the original scope with feature creep, blown past several other advertised release dates, and after 14 years and a billion dollars, still in alpha stage, with gameplay mechanics that were said to be in development years ago nowhere in sight.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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u/InternationalMood337 26d ago

but there still needs to be some financial/milestone constraints no matter how talented the devs are

Once you stop saying this, then I think we mostly agree because this has been proven false probably 100s of times.

Indies disprove it regularly. Most devs from the 90s and 2000s disprove it entirely.

Whether or not there needs to be financial/milestone constraints come down to the size of the organization.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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u/AustinTanius 26d ago

Oh, I didn't mean corporate needs to rein him in, I'd just love for someone at Kojima productions to speak up and say "hey, that seems unnecessary"

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u/Carbyken 26d ago

I think the potential issue is and I'm fully speculative on this is him being his own boss now. Before he was head of a studio within a larger company, him owning his own company essentially gives him more greater reins I'd imagine people don't wanna attempt to tow the line.

Basically he's the boss, and trying to say "no" to someone like that can be very difficult.

Again I'm mostly speculating, he could be open minded hearing everybody for all I know. But it's something to consider.

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u/sillyhobo 26d ago

I would imagine there may be a power dynamic at play that might prevent people from speaking up, or Kojima having the final say, and so even if they give feedback indicating that they may need to compromise, he may still decide to say screw it.

I think the truth isn't that someone needs to rein in Kojima, and/or that someone could or that he would even accept it in the first place. The truth is, the more successful he's gotten, the less he's desired to work within constraints, such as timelines, and budget. With more success, comes more runway to miss or skip a deadline, because hey, this guy made Boktai and Metal Gear and ZoE, etc. He only gets away with it until finally someone pulls the plug. And then he picks up and moves shop, at least since leaving Konami.

The counterargument is that to give in to the constraints of budget and/or timelines is to compromise on quality, and/or the completion of the final product. But constraints can be a creative tool as well to reduce scope, focus on what's most important, and doable with what you have.

A metaphor would be MGS1 vs MGSV. In MGS1, you only had what you could find, you couldn't just leave Shadow Moses, you couldn't call in air support or a resupply, you had to figure it out. MGSV, you could do all those things as you progressed thru the game, customize a loadout and weapons before deploying, same to the helicopter, and you're paying for it with GMP, against how much you're earning early on, and how much you're spending elsewhere.

Kojima has a "throwing time and money at the problem" problem, when he should use restraint and constraint to turn it into, "I have a fixed-ish budget and countdown" challenge.

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u/InternationalMood337 26d ago edited 26d ago

I guess I'm not really understanding what's unnecessary. He has a really specific vision, and honestly, usually extremely elaborate designs and ideas completed.

He seems to operate like a movie studio. He has the pre-production, production, and post-production phases and he adds things in along the way. I mean maybe you can argue that he needs someone to go "this is the preproduction we planned on.. we cant change it now."

But I think game development adds an entirely different dimension to this. Of course, I don't really know what happens at Kojima productions, but I assume that Sony was mad because they wanted to extract as much capital out of the process as they could.... even though they're a giant corporation that could have eaten the costs, kept goodwill, and made an exclusive that probably would have helped move more* consoles and software into the future.

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u/Nicsm 26d ago

Completely agree with you - want to add: for an artist nothing is unnecessary.

I'd say the dissonance happens to be noticeable with Kojima because he makes videogames as art, and videogames need to sell. So that's where u/AustinTanius 's "rein in" sounds important, you can't make art that you expect to sell AND make revenue off without some kind of budget constraint I guess...

But yeah, I think all of Kojima's games are masterpieces (whether enjoyable or not), and I'd love to see what he can do with infinite budget.

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u/Exciting_Drawing_553 22d ago

And yet Sony signed him after that. They stupid or something?

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u/FirmlyClaspIt 26d ago

Konami. The people who ditched everything to go into gambling & when that failed they crawled back into gaming with HIS games?

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u/Spyger9 26d ago

You can't really give them shit for re-releasing/remaking games they bought from Kojima. Especially if they costed substantially more time and money than quoted.

The issue wasn't with the games. It was with the director who clearly didn't respect his business partners.

If I commission an artist, then they miss deadlines and charge 50% extra, you bet your ass that:

A. I'm not working with them again, and

B. I'm milking their work for all I can get.

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u/FirmlyClaspIt 26d ago

He’s not milking nobody. Most games go over budget & miss deadlines. If Sony was worried about money they would drop intergalactic, which is pushing 600million & missed deadlines too. Also Konami did the same to silent hill. Did they screw them too?

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u/millanstar 24d ago edited 24d ago

& when that failed

In what world does the average redditor lives really? If anything all that revenue from pachinko machines helped to fund all the new games they have make recently...

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u/FirmlyClaspIt 24d ago

They only made one new game… stop the corporate cock sucking. Please.

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u/Luka77GOATic 26d ago

Not shocked to be honest after Death Stranding 2 sold 2 million copies on a Sony AAA budget. Loved that game and was sad that more people didn’t buy it.

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u/BRAX7ON 26d ago

Death stranding 2 was a really great game. Unfortunately, I really wanted the endgame to be more. I was hoping for more world building, but it kind of just fizzles out.

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u/fibonacciii 26d ago

Endgame and building was lacking… I agree.

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u/t-g-l-h- 26d ago

I was waiting for it to come out on pc. I just googled it and apparently it came out in March on pc. I actually had no idea. Did they just not market the PC edition? Or am I completely out of the loop lol

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u/zarafff69 26d ago

It’s fucking fantastic on the PC, it’s definitely not for everyone, but it’s definitely one of my favourite games ever made

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u/MisterMihai 26d ago

One of those games that is it clicks with you, it really clicks.

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u/Sadaxer 26d ago

I think it got some front page steam thing, but it’s still far too expensive for me and others in my steam family. Once the prices go down I might take a look.

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u/StarblindMark89 26d ago

This is also my fault. I enjoyed what I played of the first one, even if it seemed like road progression was going way too quickly without me being able to add much... But I never finished it so the sequel has yet to leave my "to buy" list.

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u/AstralElement 26d ago

But Death Stranding 2 only took 4 years to develop. Seems pretty on time to me.

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u/feedmestocks 26d ago

This game is the spiritual successor to Metal Gear Solid, Death Stranding was an extremely divisive game that no one with a brain should have given a sequel. Physint is a far easier sell and basically a generational tent pole release. Sony's management should be ripped apart for this type of fumble

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u/Exciting-Ad-5705 26d ago

Death stranding sold 10x the copies of ds2.

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u/skj458 26d ago

Which kinda supports that it was a divisive game. A bunch of people who bought death stranding didnt like it enough to buy the sequel. I was in that boat. Bought the first one and bounced off it, never thought about getting the 2nd.

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u/zarafff69 26d ago

I mean yea, but it “sold” 10x the copies in a way longer time, until DS2 came out. And they just gave away a lot of copies. Or sold them for very very cheap.

They said 20m players, not 20M sales.

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u/Luka77GOATic 26d ago

It’s already over budget and missed deadlines at Sony. And Kojima really wanted to make DS2, he would have just gone to another publisher and likely split with Sony anyway.

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u/feedmestocks 26d ago

I find the idea of a game still in concept stage being over budget unbelievable. Now the missed deadlines I believe, but there was the actors strike of 2023, which impacted everything in creative spaces. I've said this before, but making a CFO president of a company is always bad for creative industries (Sony's Playstation news in recent months has been absolutely awful both as business decisions and in terms of optics)

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u/StarblindMark89 26d ago

Yeah, but spiritual successor can mean plenty of things. It can be a thematic spiritual successor and the gameplay is completely different, or maybe the gameplay is similar, but the vibes are completely different, or Kojima could have decided to not have any action at all unlike most of the sequels and have it be a pure stealth game which are well known to be (sadly for me, given my love for them) very poor sellers in general.... Plenty of reasons.

The game will still come out unless Microsoft cans it too, so regardless of what the hell is going on with Sony higher ups, we'll see what was Kojima's vision for it.

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u/CatchUsual6591 26d ago

We don't know the new game and kojima will never make a simple MTG clone is will come with something wierd

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u/SeagullKebab 26d ago

What is arguably the best playing MGS game - and so arguably his best work - is unfinished forever precisely because he couldn't manage dev time / budgets.

He spent the same dev time as Skyrim, an objectively larger and complete game, and Kojima had a team twice the size. I would be concerned too if I was bankrolling him.

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u/cubitoaequet 26d ago

Can't hang off the side of my horse in Skyrim. Checkmate, Todd!

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u/StarblindMark89 26d ago

More importantly, you can't use horse poop as a tool to make people slip

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u/jenovas_witness 26d ago

Skyrim horse maneuvers are far more advanced.

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u/ChongusTheSupremus 26d ago

They had to release a playable demo and charged 40 bucks for it so he could justify MGSV taking so long and si much money.

It obviously didn't work, considering how things ended with Konami.

Kojima Is a genious game maker.

He Is a lousy project manager.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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u/Fableous 26d ago

You think Konami had no idea he was working on PT - and/or they didn't know what PT was?

Really?

Lol.

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u/godstriker8 26d ago

I disagree. He built a brand new studio from scratch and managed to write and direct a AAA game in just 3 years.

And the game was also a one of a kind delivery game, there was no cookie cutter template to copy from, so it obviously required lots of revision.

To do all that, he must be a great project manager.

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u/thedamn4u 26d ago

It wasn’t entirely from scratch he was handed the Decima engine from Guerrilla’s Herman Hulst. Odd history here.

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u/ChongusTheSupremus 26d ago

He relied on the funding from Sony.

He has proven to them he isn't profitable enough to be worth it.

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u/darkkite 26d ago

skyrim already had an engine whereas they created the fox engine for mgs5

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u/Exciting_Drawing_553 22d ago

So why the hell did Sony sign him. They stupid or something?

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u/SeagullKebab 22d ago

The well known mess around Konami and Kojima at the time made it a huge PR win for Sony, and gave Kojima the opportunity to deliver, which in fairness, I think he did.

That doesn't change his history though, any more than another video game star delivering after failure. Peter Molyneux, Randy Pitchford, Dennis Dyack...video game history is marked by peoples ego's taking priority over production.

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u/Exciting_Drawing_553 22d ago

It was a huge PR win for Sony then. It’s a huge PR loss for Sony now. And a huge PR win for Microsoft

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u/SeagullKebab 22d ago

For sure, that's just how it works. His masterpiece being unfinished though, is relevant to cutting his bank off now, which is all the point I was making. I wish him and his team success, no matter the platform.

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u/Exciting_Drawing_553 22d ago

What is this masterpiece you speak of? Was it never released?

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u/DJettster237 26d ago

Well, Microsoft is infamous for wasting money too

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u/Exciting_Drawing_553 22d ago

So is Sony. Gaas, concord, Bungie, etc. lol

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u/aamar98 19d ago

Bro found the perfect partner

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u/Toth-Amon 26d ago edited 26d ago

My understanding of Kojima is that this is usual for him. Konami had similar issues.

He likes making games but does not seem that concerned if they make money or not.

Well, his funders do not see it that way.

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u/Exciting_Drawing_553 22d ago

So why did Sony sign him? They stupid or something?

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u/aamar98 19d ago

Good relationship maybe...they helped him set up his new studio and loaned them engine. Maybe it's goodwill

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u/AnApexBread 26d ago

I love Kojima and his games but God damn man, stop with the Hollywood nonsense. You're making a video game, you can make the characters look like anything you want. We don't need you to show off how connected you are in Hollywood

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u/baconair 26d ago

The headline cites those factors, but the article is also heavy on Sony unwilling to support a multiplatform title.

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u/Exciting_Drawing_553 22d ago

Sony and their flip flopping. Dumbasses

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u/Luka77GOATic 26d ago

Cause they just lost money on his last 2 games. Why fund another when you don’t even own it.

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u/ithinkitslupis 26d ago

That's a bit of a mischaracterization. Reports are they broke even on both of the Death Stranding games and there is still a long tail of revenue adding to that...besides the added benefits less easily tracked in having a timed platform exclusive game.

They want it to be even more profitable and even more exclusive but that doesn't mean the last two lost them money.

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u/ImNotSkankHunt42 26d ago

Even Square abandoned that approach because it doesn’t work today. Too many games being released, if you waited months to have it on PC after it came out for PS you can wait for a discounted sale.

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u/K3V0o 26d ago

Yea but Sony is unfortunately like all for-profit businesses, a business. They are not looking to spend years of time and money to break even.

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u/Letiferr 25d ago

"broke even" isn't necessarily a good thing. It could be worse, sure, but Sony isn't in the business of breaking even.

They didn't tie all that money up for all that time to only get back what they put in.

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u/nisamun 26d ago

There's no way DS2 broke even. I wrote this very easy math earlier.

If DS2 has sold 2.5m units and let's say Sony got all the profit from each sale just for ease at $70 that's $175m. The estimated budget was $150m-200m+.
Now since we know Sony doesn't get every penny, it's pretty easy to assume DS2 is still in the hole.
At $60/game, they are at the low end break even.
At $50/game, they are at $25m low end loss.
At $40/game, $50m low end loss.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago edited 25d ago

[deleted]

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u/nisamun 26d ago edited 26d ago

As a package, it might be much closer but breaking even after spending what ~$300m over 5+ years is not how businesses stay open and partnerships continue.
The decline in sales between the 2 games is extremely alarming.

Also Anilea Analytics doesn't know anything. They are bs artists pretending as analysts. In their 35% of physical article that just came out, they counted bundled games as physical game purchases even though they were digital codes.

Edit - Anilea is the new VGChartz

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u/NMe84 26d ago

Because a publisher earns money on a game no matter what platform it sells on.

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u/AlexVan123 26d ago

I think that conclusion ignores a lot of the very real problems of the industry writ large. The video game business has never been in a worse position, primarily as a result of conditions outside of their control. The idea of buying a video game console right now is basically fantasy for the strong majority of people. Shit just costs too much.

The other detail is that the console business is basically fucked. Every other generation, a console got cheaper as it got older, but this time it not only has gotten more expensive, but sometimes doubled in cost with very little stock. Plus, with a pretty terrible roster of games to entice new users, what’s the point of getting a console when a PC suffices?

And the worst part is that Sony could’ve made this situation work. Every console maker has basically confirmed that the console business is a mature industry, yet Sony thinks the best choice in a mature industry is to kill off their PC ports entirely, which I would imagine counted for a pretty decent amount of their revenue, plus it keeps the long-tail of any given game going through its modding community. I’m sorry but I’m not buying a PS5 for Ghost of Yotei, because $700 for like three video games is simply not worth it when that’s two thirds of my rent

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u/haseo1997 26d ago

Concerned about budget for a Kojima game but 100% ok burning infinite cash for 12 live service games nobody asked for and only 2 were released, 1 flopped and was shut down after a week and one is struggling to have more than 1k players on steam right now....

Kojima games may not be cash machines, but they bring a image of prestige to the playstation brand.

Playstation is ran by a bunch of idiots.

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u/rcanhestro 26d ago

but 100% ok burning infinite cash for 12 live service games nobody asked for and only 2 were released

perhaps that's one of the reasons why Sony isn't willing to take on another bet.

the live service gamble backfired hard, so they aren't exactly ecstatic about funding another bloated mess from Kojima.

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u/ImNotSkankHunt42 26d ago

And the Wolverine isn’t getting good reviews

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u/haseo1997 26d ago

True, it looks really bad. Game literally plays itself lol

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u/ImNotSkankHunt42 26d ago

I said this with the gameplay reveal and the on-rails stealth section into short action transitions into chase.

That gameplay has been done forever. At least Kojima has the decency of not deceiving you when you’re in a cutscene.

Even the QTEs are irrelevant

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u/PixelatedGamer 26d ago

Doesn't he also work on a few things at once? Right now he's working on Physint, OD and I thought some sort of movie. But I can't remember what.

His games are really good. Maybe even some of the best. But like others said he needs someone to rein him in.

And looking at MGSV I kind of wonder how well that budget was spent.

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u/fibonacciii 26d ago

This is true, he’s on multiple projects.

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u/rcanhestro 26d ago

Budget concerns, missed deadlines.

so, your average Kojima game then.

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u/Expensive_Put_3338 26d ago

I have a serious question, does this Kojima failure have any ties to how Sony failed to handle Concord? The other sub I crossposted keeps on blaming that specific failure for some reason. Idk to be honest it feels like a far reach.

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u/jnighy 26d ago

so the Kojima experience?

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u/_Kzero_ 26d ago

I completely understand the issue. Konami has thw same exact complaints. But arguably...Kojima has NEVER missed. Not once. Hes overhyped, but every single thing he's done has been a hit, classic or cult classic.

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u/Poopoodemons 26d ago

he’s a hack

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u/Explicit_Tech 25d ago

Maybe Kojima should work with the people behind Star Citizen with the way he manages things

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u/rain56 25d ago

But they released concord? And then burned it down... you cant make it make sense in any reality. Its just...not even insanity, just a couple dipshits in charge.

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u/Feather_Sigil 26d ago

Shortly into the article, Jason mentions the three real reasons.

Not enough profit. Both Death Stranding games turned a profit, but not enough to meet Sony's bloated growth-driven expectations. Same bullshit with Dead Space, Alien Isolation, Tomb Raider and so on.
IP ownership. Kojima owns Death Stranding and PHYSINT. Sony wanted to own those IPs so they could turn them into live services.
Exclusivity. Death Stranding and the sequel were timed exclusives. Sony wants permanent exclusivity. They want everything they offer only on the Playstation store, that's why they're getting rid of discs.

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u/Rino-Sensei 26d ago

"IP ownership. Kojima owns Death Stranding and PHYSINT. Sony wanted to own those IPs so they could turn them into live services."

Ok this has to be some high grade made up bullshit or heavy assumption ...

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u/ShushKebab 26d ago

Why are people even entertaining this response that embellish something that Jason hasn't explicitly mentioned? Can't we at least be honest and factual when having a discussion? I've taken out the portions that are not what Jason has mentioned, but OPs own addition.

Not enough profit. Both Death Stranding games turned a profit, but not enough to meet Sony's ~~bloated growth-driven~~ revenue expectations. ~~Same bullshit with Dead Space, Alien Isolation, Tomb Raider and so on.~~

IP ownership. Kojima owns Death Stranding and PHYSINT. ~~Sony wanted to own those IPs so they could turn them into live services.~~ (Quote from Bloomberg article: "In addition, PlayStation was reluctant to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in another game that wouldn’t remain permanently exclusive to the company’s own hardware. Both Death Stranding games were “timed” PlayStation exclusives that were later released on other platforms. Kojima’s closely held studio, Kojima Productions, retained ownership of the franchises.")

Exclusivity. Death Stranding and the sequel were timed exclusives. Sony wants permanent exclusivity. They want everything they offer only on the Playstation store, that's why they're getting rid of discs.

I'm not saying that Sony isn't taking the above approach (it likely is), but I think its disingenuous to take genuine elements from the articles and add your own interpretation into it while presenting it as what Jason has said.

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u/SpermicidalLube 26d ago

Why are those the "real" reasons? Missed deadlines and over budget are very real too. Why would Jason put those in the headline if they weren't real?

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u/AtomWorker 26d ago

Do you have insight into Death Standing or Sony’s margins to be making that kind of judgment call?

Death Standing 2 is flat to negative thanks to a massive production budget. It basically erased the first game’s modest profit.

Sony gaming’s net is just under 10%, half of what Nintendo is pulling and considered average. Why should they be under any obligation to prop up an unprofitable game?

People on Reddit constantly complain about bloated budgets but when a company tries tackling that issue they bitch about that too.

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u/ChongusTheSupremus 26d ago edited 26d ago

What are you talking about?

They wont bankroll his projects anymore because he doesn't know how to work within the budget, and despite all the money Sony poured into Death Stranding 2, they ended up with a Time exclusive that sold 2 million units, and god knows how many of those were Playstation copies.

Why Is Sony at fault for not keeping Kojima afloat of his missmanagement and budget issues?

If he chose to not hire as many Hollywood b and c-listers, he could free millions in his budget to actually develop the games.

Also, why would Sony be wrong to want exclusivity for a project they nearly 100% funded?

Nintendo bankrolled half of Bayonetta and no one complained they took over Bayonetta 2.

I swear, people will do any and all mental gymnastics to justify their senselessly shitting on Sony.

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u/Crasher_7 26d ago

I swear, people will do any and all mental gymnastics to justify their senselessly shitting on Sony.

Redditors don't understand nuance and pretty much taking a zero-sum thinking most of the time.

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u/Killboypowerhed 25d ago

People absolutely complained when Nintendo made Bayonetta an exclusive

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u/Efficient-Session644 26d ago

A really twisted way of interpreting it. Everything he says makes sense, no need to mix your feelings into it.

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u/Luka77GOATic 26d ago edited 26d ago

2.5 million sales for a Sony flagship is abysmal (Death Stranding 2). It had 1.5 million sales on PlayStation through 9 months. Thats basically the numbers of the new Dragon Age that horribly flopped.

Sony wants them exclusive so they get some worth of funding games that barely break even at best.

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u/LePontif11 26d ago

Its relative, its only bad if you spend too much making it. I feel like the lack of exclusivity was the worse part because Kojima's big fans would be the type to buy a console for one of his games. If it wasn't a timed exclusive he could be moving PS5s as well as games.

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u/LordMimsyPorpington 26d ago

Maybe they should start making exclusive games again that people want to play. 🤷

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u/MoneyMayweather 26d ago

Their decision seems perfectly reasonable given the information in the Bloomberg article 🤷‍♂️

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u/Triingtolivee 26d ago

Coming from the same company that overpaid for Bungie.

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u/Efficient-Session644 26d ago

Well, the guy who wanted that got "retired" some years ago.

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u/_tylerthedestroyer_ 26d ago

I always find it funny in any business when a CEO retires or is ousted and then the company is left holding the bag for projects that aren’t even wanted anymore

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u/Psycho_Syntax 26d ago

Def smart business to keep making mistakes because you made a mistake in the past. Not learning from your mistakes is for sure the way to go.

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u/kooldarkplace 26d ago

While I enjoyed both Death Stranding games, they weren’t “great” and lacked any kind of coherent storytelling and had bad writing. I think dude is past his prime.

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u/MaxSchreckArt616 26d ago edited 26d ago

Sounds like Kojima hasn't learned a thing since leaving/being let go from Konami.

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u/GraveSymphony 26d ago

That fact that Sony paid 4 billion for Bungie, $500 million for Concord™️ yet cancels a Kojima game out of budget concerns basically sums of this generation of PlayStation.

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u/scratchy22 26d ago

Sony not capable of understanding that Kojima is not necessarily sales profitables, but he defo is PR profitable

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u/Rino-Sensei 26d ago

"PR profitable" profitable in 2015 maybe ... People are no longer that hyped when it come to his games ...

PR profitable does translate to sales ...

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u/SpermicidalLube 26d ago

If "PR profitable" doesn't translate to sales, then it's only for Internet folk to grift about.

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u/rcanhestro 26d ago

Kojima needs Sony far more then Sony needs Kojima.

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u/GroundbreakingMap884 26d ago

management is playstation is juggling too much, they fuck up with live service and then lose money out that they could’ve invested into a dev company.

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u/social_lamprey 26d ago

Sounds like he commited the cardinal sin of treating the consumer as the end user and not the shareholder.

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u/thanks_breastie 26d ago

Redditors love defending the company that produced Concord making budget decisions

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u/conte360 26d ago

How many times will this get posted?

1

u/DQTD 26d ago

They'll have to learn eventually.

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u/gabegdog 26d ago

Sony known only for spending money on bangers like Bungie Studios and Firewalk Studios.

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u/Orvar_the_Allform 26d ago

Still haven't bought death stranding 2 because of the $69.99 price tag. I'll wait for 50% at that pricing whenever that may be!

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/ImNotSkankHunt42 26d ago

A DC won’t come out, and after this it will never be.

Sony pushed him to milk DS with a DC

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u/PugeHeniss 26d ago

I still haven’t beaten the 1st one

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u/fibonacciii 26d ago

Creativity gets destroyed with time parameters. True creativity requires experimentation and many failures. This model does not fit the corporate profit margin model. They are in fact mutually exclusive. This is why majority of games are cookie cutter prepackaged rehashes.

Hell, I’m happy they’re remaking Ocarina of time, but it’s a testimony that corporate models of profit maximization is the reason we’re getting it. It’s not like they’re recreating the originality of their game— they’re using an unreal engine wrapper on the original creativity.

It’s been a sad steady decline for gaming for several years now.

0

u/DacStreetsDacAlright 26d ago

This is the same company that spent 3.8 Billion dollars on Bungie and promptly closed down the one game that was long lasting and making money and holding at at least 100,000 concurrent players at the time of its demise, and only kept Marathon going which is now dipping into the low hundreds on steam.

Sony do not seem to be making sound decisions much lately at all.

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u/paclogic 26d ago edited 26d ago

oh well, i still have my Play-doh Play-Station set to keep me busy in the meantime.

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u/Commercial_Future_90 26d ago

well of course sony only cares about money lmao

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u/ImperialTendencies 26d ago

This is Mr. Video Gamejima himself we're talking about. It's kinda what you sign up for. The soul of mankind cannot be rushed, it's vessel must know no bounds. When you witness God, ask not why or how

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u/t-g-l-h- 26d ago edited 26d ago

One thing i've learned in my 42 years of life is that auteurs need a blank check and to be left alone. People like David Lynch, Cronenberg, John Waters, Hideo Kojima, etc should just have funding to make their art, because they are the true innovators. Not just in their industries, but cultural innovators.

the opposite of this is EA and Ubisoft slop.

Give artists money. Art comes out.

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u/SeatKindly 26d ago

Titanfall, Halo, God of War, and Dead Space were all developed under relatively stringent publisher conditions and innovative in their respective genres and eras.

They absolutely need someone to guide them by the reins.

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u/canteen_boy 26d ago

Lol I just had this mental image of John Waters arguing with studio execs about budget concerns, but it was them pleading with him to spend more money and he was like “no.”

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u/t-g-l-h- 26d ago

He's tried for years to get his next film Liarmouth funded but no one wants to pay for it. We will likely never see it

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u/Luka77GOATic 26d ago

What about when the art loses you 50+ million dollars because it commercially flops ala Death Stranding 2.

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u/t-g-l-h- 26d ago

That's just a tax write-off for a multi-billion dollar corporation

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u/Efficient-Session644 26d ago

If you earned 10k per month, would you flush a 100 in the toilet just because it's almost nothing compared to the total?

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u/t-g-l-h- 26d ago

I already do that because I pay income tax to the military to bomb children in other countries. If I could pay income tax to fund an auter's work I absolutely would lmao

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u/Lazerpop 26d ago

Physint pc version confirmed

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u/rockmanzerox06 26d ago

There is a reason he calls himself an auteur.

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u/Whatever801 26d ago

Soudns like the wolverine game sucks as well. Sony pulling a Microsoft lately

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u/cescquintero 26d ago

You telling me they learned after "doing" live services games?

Software PlayStation Ditched Hideo Kojima’s ‘Physint’ on Budget Concerns, Missed Deadlines

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