Kojima Productions is not in the habit of responding to online rumor mills. On Sunday, it broke with that habit.
The studio released a statement tackling the rumors, speculation and allegations that have accumulated since Physint, its in-production action espionage game, moved from Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) to Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios.
“Normally, we would not comment on unsubstantiated speculation on the internet, but these aspersions around our relationship with PlayStation, the commercial performance of the DEATH STRANDING franchise, and the broader production planning and investment for PHYSINT, have reached beyond the studio and have touched our fans, our creative partners, and colleagues we have worked alongside with for three decades,” the studio said.
It also made a point of flagging where the claims did not originate. “None of the claims written came from any official or on-the-record source and as such we encourage you to take them with a dose of scepticism,” the statement said.
What the studio wants on the record
The final sentence carries the weight. “While we recognise that the article may have caused alarm, we want to reassure you all, for the record: that the studio is in a healthy, profitable state, development for PHYSINT continues to move forward with XBOX, and our relationship with PlayStation remains strong,” Kojima Productions said.
Read it again and you find three distinct rebuttals bundled together: the studio’s financial health, the game’s development status and its standing with PlayStation. Whichever rumor worried you most, it is addressed there.
The article that started it
The “article” being referenced is a Bloomberg report published September 11. Drawing on people close to the project, it claimed SIE had canceled Physint over concerns of “budget, potential profitability and exclusivity.”
Bloomberg’s anonymous sources said, “One major factor behind the decision was the commercial performance of Kojima’s previous two games […] which didn’t meet PlayStation’s revenue expectations.”
The report went further still. According to the sources, Physint had blown past deadlines, was “on track to be well over budget despite being years away from release,” and PlayStation was reluctant to put “hundreds of millions of dollars in another game that wouldn’t remain permanently exclusive to [SIE’s] own hardware.”
How the switch played out
Nobody disputes the publisher change itself. On September 10, SIE announced it would no longer publish the game from Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions. Later that same day, Xbox Game Studios said it was stepping in.
Kojima supplied the timeline. He said a notice arrived from SIE in mid-June informing him the company was canceling its release of Physint, after which he and his studio spent the “last three months searching tirelessly for a new partner” before settling on Xbox Game Studios.
In other words, the studio confirms the cancellation, confirms the three-month hunt for a partner and confirms Xbox as the new home. What it pushes back on is the narrative about why it happened.
As of press time, Kojima Productions had issued no further statements on the matter.