Sony tries to cancel Hideo Kojima’s Physint game but Xbox has saved it

The list of top 10 anime betrayals needs to be updated, as Hideo Kojima reveals that Sony has cut ties with him and refused to publish his Metal Gear Solid spiritual sequel Physint.

Back in 2024, famed Japanese developer Hideo Kojima announced that he was making ‘a new action espionage game in cooperation with Sony.’ Codenamed Physint, it was implied to be a spiritual successor to the Metal Gear series, which he invented, but since then nothing has been seen or said about it (beyond the rumour that Robert Pattison is playing the lead character).

That’s nothing unusual, for a game that Kojima indicated was at least five years away from release, but out of the blue developer Kojima Productions has revealed that the game is no longer being published or funded by Sony and that instead Xbox has taken over

Although the official annoucement says very little, Kojima has made it clear, via his personal X account, that PlayStation Studios suddenly dropped support in mid-June, effectively cancelling the Physint project. They apparently didn’t say why but that led to Kojima spending three months looking for an alternative partner, which is when Xbox became involved.

Not only is Kojima already working with Xbox on horror game OD but it’s easy to see how the situation would be appealing to Xbox, who now get to look like the heroes after Sony left one of gaming’s most famous creators in the lurch.

It also allows them to show that they are still willing and able to invest in new projects, despite the thousands of developers they’ve laid off in recent years, and the many studios they’ve sold off or shut down.

‘Creators have choices about where and how they bring their ideas to life. We’re honoured that Kojima-san has chosen Xbox to work with Kojima Productions on Physint. His ambition to challenge conventions reflects the kind of creativity we want to support at Xbox,’ said Xbox boss Asha Sharma on Xbox Wire.

The same post claims that the ‘relationship will also extend beyond games, with Xbox and Kojima Productions collaborating across film and television to bring new stories to broader audiences.’

This is an important detail as the original Sony deal seemed to involve Columbia Pictures, which they own, which presumably meant some kind of TV or movie tie-in was planned.

‘Physint is an important project both to me personally and to Kojima Productions,’ said Kojima. ‘Please rest assured that development of Physint, our genre-defining action-espionage title, is ongoing and will continue moving forward.’

Beyond that minimal description, there’s still no indication of what exactly Physint is or when it might be released. But then the same can be said for OD, which has so far only briefly been shown in public.

It’s still unclear whether OD is an Xbox exclusive or not, given Microsoft’s policy on that has changed widely during its development. It does sound like Physint will be an Xbox console exclusive, given that it was going to be exclusive to PlayStation 5, but we won’t know for sure until there’s an official statement.

Although Metal Gear, and by association Kojima himself, has always been closely connected to the PlayStation brand, Kojima’s relationship with Xbox has been deepening steadily for years. Earlier in the year, he was gifted a mysterious box by Sharma, which was widely imagined to contain a prototype of the Project Helix next gen console.

This would’ve been before the Physint deal, but it is very possible that OD is being positioned as a Project Helix launch title, or at least a means to show off its capabilities.

Why did Sony cut ties with Hideo Kojima?

As for why Sony wanted to cancel Phyint, there’s no real clue. Fans have suggested it was because of low sales of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach but it’s impossible to theorise beyond that because Sony has seen Physint and no one else, other than Xbox, has.

‘After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to step away from collaborating with Kojima Productions on its project Physint. We continue to have great admiration for Hideo Kojima’s vision for the game,’ said Sony in a statement on X.

‘Our relationship remains strong after three decades of industry-leading, genre-defining creative cooperation, and we look forward to continued close collaboration with Hideo Kojima and his award-winning independent studio in the future.’

Considering Xbox is publishing both the next two games it’s hard to imagine what else they could be closely collaborating on, in what is a shocking turn of events that simultaneously creates more bad press for Sony and ensures it has even less first party exclusives for the PlayStation 5 and 6.

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