A while ago, Hideo Kojima announced his return to tactical espionage action with Physint, in partnership with PlayStation, but now that marriage has ended.
The head of Kojima Productions and mastermind behind the Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding franchises made a surprising announcement yesterday, mentioning that in June, Sony sent an unexpected notice informing him that they would cancel Physint.
Yet, Kojima-san did not give up, as the game is important not only to him personally but also to Kojima Productions.
With the determination to keep the project alive, he and his staff spent the past three months looking for a new partner, and they have found it in Xbox, with which they “share a common vision for the future.”
As such, development of Physint will continue and is currently ongoing.
You can see the announcement below.
Xbox followed up with its own announcement, including a comment from CEO Asha Sharma.
“Creators have choices about where and how they bring their ideas to life. We’re honored that Kojima-san has chosen Xbox to work with Kojima Productions on Physint. His ambition to challenge conventions reflects the kind of creativity we want to support at Xbox”
We also hear more from Kojima-san himself.
“This expands our relationship with Xbox beyond Od. As we move forward with the development of Physint, we remain committed to redefining the action-espionage genre for players around the world”
Editor’s Note: The statements have been reproduced verbatim, but we’ve removed every instance of all-caps, because nobody really likes all-caps.
Interestingly, we also hear that Xbox and Kojima Productions will also collaborate “across film and television to bring new stories to broader audiences.”
Kojima Productions is already partnering with Xbox for the mysterious horror game Od, so this new alliance isn’t entirely new. Yet, the partnership with Sony was at the root of the creation of the studio itself, which was announced by Kojima-san shoulder-to-shoulder with the much-missed former PlayStation CEO Andrew House.
At the moment, we don’t know where this leaves the overall relationship between Hideo Kojima and PlayStation, especially when thinking about the future of the Death Stranding franchise.
