Sony recently separated from Hideo Kojima, allowing Xbox to swoop to publish Kojima's next game. New details reveal why Sony made this decision after decades of working with the Metal Gear Solid creator.
Sony recently made the decision to separate from Hideo Kojima and terminate a partnership deal with Kojima Productions. Sony was set to publish Kojima's next game, PHYSINT, but that fell apart. Xbox took advantage of the rare opportunity and, in a tables-have-turned situation, will now publish PHYSINT instead of Sony.
Hideo Kojima is one of the most famous game developers on the planet. He merged action with an operatic storyline in Metal Gear Solid and blurred the line between movies and games with Death Stranding. So why would Sony break up with Kojima? New reports from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier give some clues, and it sounds like Sony separated from Kojima for some of the same reasons that Konami did back in 2015.
Sources tell Bloomberg that Kojima's relationship with Sony had been strained by the typical dysfunctions shared by most brilliant creatives, with missed deadlines and going over-budget being the biggest issues.
Reports also indicate that Sony was disappointed by the revenue that Death Stranding 2 sales brought in, which is interesting, because DS2 was sold for $70 whereas the first game was the more standard $60.
As far as the investment goes, Sony was apparently hesitant to spend hundreds of millions of dollars making PHYSINT when the game may not stay exclusive to the PlayStation platform. Kojima Productions is independent, and Death Stranding 1 was not only released on Xbox, but arrived on Game Pass for a time.
Following multiple releases on PC, Sony has reinvigorated exclusivity and is now distancing itself from releasing its core first-party games on the platform, instead keeping them on PlayStation in a bid to sell more consoles and bolster the brand's value.
PHYSINT was/is set to be a big-budget AAA game, complete with real-world actor portrayals through motion capture. It's also set in a brand new IP, and while video games are expensive to make by default, new IPs can tack on millions more dollars to the budget.
Another interesting point brought up by the reports is that most of Sony's old guard that had previously worked with Kojima over the years simply aren't there any more, meaning Kojima doesn't have the same kind of connective tissue with PlayStation that he had before. What this means for the future of Kojima's relationship with PlayStation remains unknown.
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