PlayStation Reportedly Cancelled Kojima's Physint Due to Budget Concerns and Potential Profits - News
by William D'Angelo , posted 1 day ago / 2,173 Views
PlayStation ended its deal with Kojima Productions' action espionage game, Physint, in June and it was announced this week that Xbox had signed a new deal to publish the game.
Bloomberg is now reporting the reason PlayStation ended the deal with Hideo Kojima's studio was due to budget concerns, as well as the potential profitability and exclusivity. This comes from people familiar with the project.
One of the major factors was due to the commercial performance of the two Death Stranding games as both failed to meet PlayStation’s revenue expectations, according to the sources.
Physint has also reportedly missed deadlines and was on track to be over budget and was years away from release. PlayStation was unwilling to invest hundreds of million of dollars more in another game that wouldn't remain a permanent exclusive to PlayStation consoles.
The two Death Stranding games were timed PlayStation exclusives with the original coming to PC less than a year after the PlayStation 4 release and even to the Xbox Series X|S in November 2024. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach would release for the PlayStation 5 in June 2025 and for PC in March 2026.
With Xbox publishing Physint, the game will launch on Xbox consoles and PC day one, said the people. This isn't a surprise as Xbox releases all of its first-party games day one on PC.
"Betting on Kojima-san is an easy call," said an Xbox spokesperson. "We believe in his team’s ability to build AAA games with groundbreaking, new IP and we believe in OD, Physint, and our growing partnership."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Every game is a potential underperformer. I would bet on Kojimas spiritual successor to MGS above every single GaaS game Sony is trying to push.
Where are you seeing that Kojima had plans for a movie? All I'm seeing is that Xbox came to the table with requests that they not only get (temporary) exclusivity rights, but also movie rights (in that Xbox may have been the one who requested a movie be made from it, though it is a bit ambiguous) and a sequel to OD.
Search for it online Kojima was working with Columbia pictures for this as well. Kojima described the game as a movie and game at the same time. This is the same guy with 40 min cut scenes in MGS4.
shit was literally announced inside a film studio ffs.
I saw a guy on yt, saying this needed to be remade in a new engine. And that Kojima needs to do OD for xbox first.... so this is like a game we will see in 2034+ or something.
On par with Sony’s mindset this gen. Release very few games and the ones you do release are either big budget AAA slop or service based games. Coast on PS+ revenue and your cut of digital transactions.
This is why I believe Komani and Kojima had a falling out. However this is a massive get for Xbox, if it turns out to be a great IP.
sad! xbox been dropping the ball for years, now its sonys turn
No way! Who would have thought a Kojima game would have a massive budget!?
Isn't this exactly what everyone thought was the reason?
Tbh when you're dealing with Kojima you already know it's going to be premium as far as budgets go MGSV after all cost around 80m and at the time that was immense. It suited Sony before because Konami was footing the bill the main issue here is the PS6 is meant to be on the way and this would have been an obvious flagship title it's now not clear what they plan to launch it with.
Sony is not getting the money they already invested in the project back. MS getting a discount on a game that already has some dev time under its belt.
From what was reported, there wasn’t much to show.
They should be working on OD, right? which I don't think we've even seen yet.
This is silly, Kojima gotta be on the hook for that money once them and MS launch the game, cause if that's the case all devs have to do is get an initial partner then switch partners 1/5th of the way done and walk away with free money, this is dumb dude.
It does make sense. Sounds like a very expensive project and for it to not be exclusive it might not make sense for Sony to pay for it. I am glad though that the project will continue on though and will look forward to seeing how it pans out.
