Acquisitions are a hot topic these days especially with Microsoft buying Activision-Blizzard and Sony acquiring Bungie. There have been some rumors about the latter acquiring Kojima Productions which developed Death Stranding. The title’s exclusivity on PS4 and PS5 may have also warranted these suspicions.
However, the title’s recent addition to the official PlayStation Studios banner (which creator Hideo Kojima tweeted out – see below) really got the ball rolling. Nevertheless, Kojima maintains that the studio is independent. In a follow-up tweet on his English Twitter account, he said, “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, but Kojima Productions has been and will continue to be an independent studio.”
Of course, the developer has also been rumored to be working with Xbox on an existing IP (with former Portal developer Kim Swift reportedly being appointed as senior director of Xbox Cloud Gaming for this purpose). Though no official announcement has been made, VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb reported that the deal was still “on” as of a “couple of weeks ago.” Stay tuned for more details on the same, hopefully sooner than later.