Last week, we saw the breakdown of the partnership between Kojima Productions and PlayStation over the former’s upcoming game, Physint. According to Hideo Kojima, the platform owner cancelled the game abruptly back in June, leading to Kojima having to scramble to find a new publisher before Xbox took that role. Now, Bloomberg reports that the Sony videogames subsidiary dropped the project over a multitude of reasons, a few of which sound pretty similar to when Konami cut ties with Kojima last decade.
The report cites sources who said that one of the reasons PlayStation abandoned the Physint project was because of the commercial performance of Kojima’s Death Stranding series. Both entries did not meet the company’s revenue expectations, the sources said. Beyond that, PlayStation was also reluctant to invest massive amounts of money into a game that would eventually end up on other platforms, in the same way that the Death Stranding series eventually became available outside of PlayStation consoles.
One notable platform in the equation here is PC. The Sony subsidiary has already decided that it will no longer be publishing its single-player games there. This would lead to Kojima Productions having to either self-publish or find another publisher for PC, and therefore would not benefit PlayStation from the PC release of Physint.
Avoiding The Relapse
Reminiscent of when Kojima was still with Konami, the report notes that Physint has “missed deadlines”, presumably referring to development milestone deadlines. It was also on track to be well over budget despite being years away from release, the sources said. PlayStation is possibly aware of the whole drama behind the scenes of the Metal Gear Solid V production, and decided to cut its losses earlier rather than later.
The first Metal Gear Solid, arguably the game that propelled the series and Kojima into industry stardom, was a PlayStation 1 exclusive, marking a long relationship between the platform holder and the videogames director. This led to the partnership between the two following the whole Konami row. According to the report, the PlayStation executives who had close relationships with Kojima have already left the company, which may explain the lack of hesitation on its part when the decision came to cut ties with Kojima and his Physint project.
This leaves us where we are now, with Xbox picking up what PlayStation has canned. The Microsoft videogames division has no issue with PC, which is great for markets such as Malaysia where Xbox has no official presence. There’s also the platform holder’s ambitions beyond videogames, as it has announced that it will also be doing TV and film with Kojima, including for Physint. The report cites a spokesperson as saying that “betting on Kojima-san is an easy call”. Though it remains to be seen if the decision stays the same once familiar budget issues arise once again.
(Source: Bloomberg)
