Hideo Kojima Reveals Sony Canceled Physint During a Zoom Call, Still Unclear on the Reasons

Fans were taken aback when PlayStation recently announced on X that it would no longer be publishing Physint. Hideo Kojima, the creative force behind this new spiritual successor to Metal Gear Solid, expressed his own surprise and confusion when Sony first broke the news to him privately back in June. He admitted that he was left speechless and still doesn’t understand why the PS5 manufacturer decided to drop his game.

“In June, SIE wanted to have a Zoom call. I was swamped at the time—I had just returned from a Prada event in New York and then headed to LA,” he shared in a recent interview. “When we finally had the call, they told me they could no longer fund development for Physint. I was stunned and asked, ‘What did you say?’ I couldn’t fully grasp what they were telling me. I was in shock.”

Kojima Productions has around 200 employees, and the veteran developer immediately began to consider the ramifications of the deal falling through, including potential issues with bank loans and the possibility of laying off many team members hired specifically for Physint, which Kojima envisions as both a game and a movie.

He continued:

Nothing could have prepared me for their decision to withdraw from the project. I thought, ‘What am I going to do starting tomorrow?’ But I have a lot of love for Sony. I don’t harbor any ill feelings because I understand it’s a challenging time in the gaming industry.

I’ve been collaborating with them for about 30 years… I was close with Mr. Ken Kutaragi and Mr. Hirai. But things have changed recently. I realized that this is the reality. It’s the 10th anniversary of my studio, and it could collapse, right?

During the call, Kojima was joined by Kojima Productions president Shinji Hirano and head of talent development Aki Saito, but he didn’t disclose who was present from Sony’s side or if PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst was the one who delivered the news. Initially, the three kept the information to themselves. Kojima mentioned that after the meeting, he went back to work on new concepts for Physint.

“The corporate structure of SIE has changed since the Jim Ryan era,” he noted. “But this was a project we were both excited about and had mutually agreed upon. That’s why the shock was even greater in June.”

While Kojima Productions eventually secured a deal to continue developing the game with Xbox, Kojima still doesn’t understand why Sony made the abrupt decision to pull out. “They haven’t reached out to me since,” he said. “But I’m not at odds with Sony. We’re not in a dispute. What I want to express is that we’ve had a relationship for 30 years, so if this was the conclusion, I would have preferred to hear it sooner. But in that June meeting, they just gave us the final notice.”

Reports indicated that part of the reasoning behind Sony’s withdrawal from Physint was due to budget overruns and missed deadlines. Additionally, Death Stranding 2 reportedly didn’t perform as well as Sony had hoped, and with the company stepping back from PC, Physint would need to sell well exclusively on PlayStation hardware to recoup costs. Changes in leadership at Sony also seemed to contribute to the unraveling of the collaboration.

The interview took place before the reports surfaced, but Kojima Productions has since responded, urging people to approach the speculation with skepticism and asserting that their relationship with Sony remains intact:

You may have seen recent articles speculating on the reasons for the change in publishing partners for Physint.

Typically, we wouldn’t comment on unverified speculation, but the claims regarding our relationship with PlayStation, the commercial performance of the Death Stranding franchise, and the broader production planning for Physint have reached beyond the studio and affected our fans, creative partners, and colleagues we’ve worked with for three decades.

None of the assertions made came from any official or on-the-record source, so we encourage you to take them with a grain of skepticism.

This was indeed a serious situation for the studio with potentially significant implications. While we recognize that the article may have caused concern, we want to reassure everyone that the studio is in a healthy, profitable state, development for Physint is progressing with Xbox, and our relationship with PlayStation remains strong.

Kojima reiterated that there’s been no “divorce” with Sony in his interview. “I’ve always been a big Sony fan,” he stated. “I’ve been using a Walkman. All my cameras are Sony. So I have no bad feelings towards them.”