In the midst of the drama surrounding Sony’s decision to cancel its deal with Kojima Productions to publish Physint, studio head Hideo Kojima has offered more details on the matter. In an interview with The Washington Post, Kojima revealed that Sony revealed its decision to the studio over a Zoom call that involved studio president Shinji Hirano and head of talent development Aki Saito, leaving Kojima himself “shocked and surprised.”
“I didn’t have any anger or sadness,” he said, before going on to discuss how Kojima Productions as a whole would have been in trouble if it weren’t able to procure more funding. A big reason behind Kojima being shocked about Sony’s decision came down to the fact that he didn’t consider Physint to be a risky project in the vein of the Death Stranding games. “This is the biggest selling title I could possibly create. I didn’t think Physint would be on the list of being canceled.”
In another interview with IGN, Kojima also discussed his relationship with Sony that went all the way back to the original PlayStation, with him having previously worked with people like Ken Kutaragi and Kazuo Hirai. This relationship also meant that, even though many of those people don’t work at Sony anymore, Kojima still has a soft spot for the company.
“Nothing could’ve prepared me for their decision to step away from the project. So, I thought, ‘What am I going to do from tomorrow?’ But from my side, I love Sony. And I don’t have any bad feelings against them because I know that it’s a tough time in the game industry.
“I’ve been working with them for like 30 years… Mr. Ken Kutaragi, Mr. Hirai, I was close with them. But it’s not like that recently. I realized that, okay, this is the reality. It’s the 10th anniversary of my studio. My studio might collapse, right?”
Kojima Productions got the news from Sony that the latter wouldn’t be publishing Physint back in June. In the fallout of this, the game maker spoke about how he simply decided to flesh out the project’s concept more. The decision was also made to keep the news a secret between the three of them – Kojima, Hirano, and Saito – while a new deal could be signed with another company.
“I couldn’t tell my staff until we decided on a new partner. But three days after the meeting with SIE, I called the leaders of the Physint team, and I explained the situation to them. But I also said, ‘I’m going to go find a new partner, so don’t worry.’ But at the same time, because of the cancellation of the project, I had to make the Physint team smaller and move some people to the OD team.”
Ultimately, Kojima Productions ended up signing a new deal with Xbox to publish Physint, further expanding on the relationship the two companies had already forged thanks to their deal for the upcoming horror project OD. In the meantime, Kojima also revealed more details about development progress on both projects through a new video.
