“I was surprised to see on social media that the Wachowski sisters had ‘offered me a Matrix game project!’ back in 1999,” wrote Kojima. “In all these 26 years, no one ever told me such a conversation had taken place.”

Kojima also revealed that he had spoken with the Wachowskis through email at the time, with both sides being fans of each others’ works. He also noted that, while The Matrix hadn’t yet been released in Japan, he had already seen the film in theatres in the US.

“When the Wachowskis came to Japan for promotion, I believe I met them three times,” Kojima continued. “In the morning, we had a Famitsu interview in Shinjuku — that time, Geof Darrow joined us for the talk session. In the afternoon, they were invited to the headquarters of Konami’s CS Division.”

Ultimately, however, Kojima also admitted that he likely wouldn’t have been able to take on a project based on The Matrix, since he was busy with his work on Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty at the time. However, he does note that he would have figured out a way to make it happen if he had known about the meeting to begin with.

“At that time, I was already extremely busy with MGS2 and probably couldn’t have accepted the offer right away,” he wrote. “But if someone had told me, maybe there could’ve been a way to make it work.”

Earlier this week, former vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment Christopher Bergstresser had spoken about this meeting between the Wachowskis and Konami. While the company said “no” at the time to a Matrix-based project by Kojima, Bergstresser noted that Kojima was also present at the meeting.

“The Wachowskis were big fans of Kojima,” said Bergstresser. “So Kazumi Kitaue, Kojima, Aki Saito (who still works with Kojima), and I were at the Konami HQ, and we got a call from the Wachowskis, who wanted to come in and meet with Kojima. So they did!”

“The two of them came in with their concept artist, and effectively they said to Kojima, ‘We really want you to do the Matrix game. Can you do that?’ Aki translated this into Japanese for Mr Kitaue, and Kitaue just looked at them and told them plainly, ‘No’. We did still get to enjoy the Matrix Japanese premiere and afterparty, though.”

While a game based on The Matrix by Hideo Kojima ultimately never happened, the film franchise did end up with a few games – Enter the Matrix, The Matrix Online and Path of Neo. There was also a more recent tech demo based on The Matrix, dubbed The Matrix Awakens, that was used to showcase the capabilities of Unreal Engine 5.

Speaking to Time Extension, former vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment Christopher Bergstresser revealed that the film-makers had approached the company for this, noting that they were big fans of Kojima’s work. He confirmed that Konami executive Kazumi Kitaue simply said “No” when approached by the Wachowskis in 1999, just in time for the film’s Japanese theatrical release.

“The Wachowskis were big fans of Kojima,” said Bergstresser. “So Kazumi Kitaue, Kojima, Aki Saito (who still works with Kojima), and I were at the Konami HQ, and we got a call from the Wachowskis, who wanted to come in and meet with Kojima. So they did!”

“The two of them came in with their concept artist, and effectively they said to Kojima, ‘We really want you to do the Matrix game. Can you do that?’ Aki translated this into Japanese for Mr Kitaue, and Kitaue just looked at them and told them plainly, ‘No’. We did still get to enjoy the Matrix Japanese premiere and afterparty, though.”

The time frame lines up rather nicely with Kojima and his team working on Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, which would be released on PS2 in 2001. While the exact reasons why Kitaue said no to the Wachowskis are unknown, it might have something to do with the company’s lack of interest in adapting a licensed property.

As for the Wachowskis, the two film makers have long been fans of Japanese media, with these inspirations manifesting in their many works, ranging from the Ghost in the Shell influences in The Matrix and the entire existence of The Animatrix, to the visual style that the two sisters went with for Speed Racer. The Matrix eventually got three games – Enter The Matrix, The Matrix Online, and Path of Neo – showcasing that they were also fans of gaming as a medium for the opportunities it provided for storytelling.

Interestingly, according to another former employee of Konami, Kojima had expressed some interest in partnering up with the Wachowskis despite the company itself declining. Kojima seemingly showed “strong interest” in a potential partnership, and the creative teams felt “immense disappointment” at it ultimately never happening.

Kojima himself would go on to reference The Matrix in his games, including the Metal Gear titles, in some ways, especially when it came to tackling some of the heaver subject matters that Sons of Liberty was known for at the time.

More recently, The Matrix got a tech demo that showcased the capabilities of Unreal Engine 5, dubbed The Matrix Awakens. While it has since been delisted from digital stores, you can check out more details in our coverage.

As mentioned previously, The Matrix’s many sci-fi concepts and its digitized world made it the perfect candidate for a video game. Unsurprisingly, the writer-director duo also thought the same – and even pitched a game to Shiny Entertainment way before the first movie even came out. But since the studio wasn’t interested in pursuing licensed video games at the time and because the Wachowskis couldn’t really explain the movie’s concept properly without visual effects and whatnot, Shiny Entertainment turned the project down. But once The Matrix was released on the big screen, the studio became really excited to create a game based on this property.

And as fate would have it, the Wachowskis would once again go on to pitch another Matrix game to Shiny Entertainment and this time – the studio readily agreed to make the game. However, Enter The Matrix would have to meet a rigid deadline coinciding with the release of The Matrix Reloaded – which made development and production cycles really challenging for the team. While the team somehow managed to push through all these obstacles and released Enter The Matrix in May 2003, the end product was anything but spectacular.

With a rating of 62 on Metacritic, Enter The Matrix felt like a rushed product by all means with a litany of issues in the visuals, gameplay, and technical stability department. And while the game did add story elements to the movies, many fans felt disappointed with the game since the game saw players controlling Niobe or Ghost instead of Neo, the protagonist of the movies. But like most licensed video game properties of the time, the underwhelming critical response did very little to affect the sales of the game, and Enter The Matrix has reportedly sold more than 5 million units in its lifetime.

Shiny Entertainment would once again get a shot at developing another game based on the franchise, and The Matrix: Path of Neo was released in 2005. Remedying the criticisms of its previous work, The Matrix: Path of Neo would see players controlling Keanu Reeves’ character Thomas Anderson in some of the most iconic moments of the trilogy. With a relatively easier work schedule and a broader amount of material available to draw inspiration from, The Matrix: Path of Neo was a much better and well-rounded experience. 

Sure, it wasn’t anything extraordinary, but Shiny Entertainment did a great job at capturing the spirit of the movies by letting players experience all these amazing sequences from The Matrix trilogy. And unlike the movie where Neo sacrifices his life for the greater good at the end, The Matrix: Path of Neo sees Neo surviving the final battle against Mecha Smith all while Queen’s “We Are The Champions” plays in the background. Hell, the Wachowski siblings even make an appearance in their 8-bit video game form before introducing this alternate ending to the trilogy. 

The Matrix: Path of Neo’s critical reception fared better than Enter The Matrix, with the highest Metacritic score being 73 for the Xbox version. But because there wasn’t any accompanying movie release to speak of, the game didn’t perform so well on the commercial front even though public sales figures aren’t known.

During the same year as Path of Neo, Monolith Productions also released The Matrix Online – an MMORPG set in the universe of the movies. The developer and Wachowskis had high hopes from the game, as they described it as the continuation of the movies. The Matrix Online had a few neat ideas of its own, such as how its classes worked and how pursuing missions for a particular organization would affect the player’s trust with the other two, and so on. Unfortunately or not for The Matrix Online, it was released at a time when the MMORPG market was becoming increasingly saturated – and not a lot of players subscribed to this live-service title. While Monolith Productions handed out the reins to Sony Interactive Entertainment who continued to churn out content for the game for a couple of years – The Matrix Online was finally shut down in 2009 due to low subscriber numbers.

Looking at the big picture, we can deduce what actually went wrong with the series. Enter The Matrix was a one hit wonder, solely on account of it being a licensed game that released alongside one of the most anticipated movies at the time. Its follow-up was a decent attempt at reimagining the franchise’s greatest moments in video game form, but because of the absence of an accompanying release – the game presumably failed to succeed on the commercial front. In a similar vein, The Matrix Online was a decent product, but came at a time when the market was already oversaturated with competitors all vying for the attention of subscribers. With two consecutive commerical and critical failures and no follow-up movie to The Matrix Trilogy, interest for a game based on the property slowly and steadily waned down to the point when no one started caring about a new Matrix game.

Jump to the current scenario, and The Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5 demo has once again re-ignited the flames of hope in the hearts of devoted fans across the globe. Considering the massive fandom garnered by this free-to-download tech demo and the recently released The Matrix Resurrections movie, logic would suggest that a full-fledged game on the property could be in the works. But practically speaking, there’s not even a flying mention of a Matrix game being in development anywhere – let alone leaks or detailed reports on the matter. Hell, even the demo itself will have been delisted from storefronts by the time this feature goes live. As such, it seems really unlikely that we are going to see a Matrix game any time in the future.

That’s a shame, because there’s no shortage of talent in the industry that would make for a great game based on this property. I’d personally like to see Remedy Entertainment take on such a project, especially after the amazing combat options and the ominous atmosphere the developer delivered in Control. Kojima Productions might also be a great fit for the idea, since Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty also deals with similar ideas of being trapped in a virtual world and Kojima is a master of sending the player down a never-ending rabbit hole of conspiracies and revelations which is also a recurring theme for the movies. While we could go on and on all day about similarly promising developers and ideas for a Matrix game, but it seems that the cold hard truth is that there’s most likely not going to be one – at least for the foreseeable future. 

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.