One of the Last Great PS4 Exclusives Released 6 Years Ago Today

In late 2019, the PlayStation 4 was starting to wind down. Sony’s console had enjoyed a solid run, but the console-maker was set to move on to the PlayStation 5 in 2020. That said, developers weren’t quite done with the console. After all, it’s still one of the best-selling machines of all time. Letting it go out without at least one more bang would be a shame and a huge loss of potential money, given the massive install base. Thankfully, Kojima Productions had its first game ready to go. When Death Stranding launched on November 8th, 2019, it was clear that the PS4 had something special for its final holiday season.

Death Stranding Showed Hideo Kojima and Sony Still Had It

In the lead-up to Death Stranding‘s release, you’d be forgiven if you were a little skeptical. Yes, Hideo Kojima is a legendary director with a string of hits to his name, but he’d been working under Konami for so long that seeing him start his own studio and work on a non-Metal Gear Solid for the first time in nearly a decade (not counting the P.T. demo) was a little scary for fans.

Thankfully, Kojima and his team proved to be up to the task. Truthfully, no one should have doubted him, but hearing him talk about inventing a new genre called “strand games” and learning there’d be characters called “Die-Hardman” and “Deadman,” left some fans thinking he might’ve taken Death Stranding too far into silly town.

Instead, players got one of the best games of the PlayStation 4 life cycle. Sure, Death Stranding‘s narrative is as convoluted and difficult to understand as many Metal Gear Solid games (maybe even more so), but the massive open world was drop-dead gorgeous. Add in a compelling asynchronous cooperative multiplayer that lets you help other players without directly interacting with them, and you have a gameplay loop that’s weirdly compelling despite its simplicity.

Like most of Kojima’s best works, Death Stranding is probably trying to do a bit too much with a leader who might like his ideas more than he should. Don’t get me wrong. Kojima is a visionary developer who has helped push cinematic video games forward more than just about anybody, but there are definitely times when he’d benefit from another editing pass.

No matter how you slice it, Death Stranding is one of the swan songs for the PlayStation 4. It’s come to other platforms, but this is a PS4 game through and through. Sony Interactive published it and secured the sequel as a PlayStation 5 exclusive. Kojima Productions might not be a first-party developer, but Death Stranding is synonymous with the Sony brand.

The Future of Death Stranding

As mentioned, Kojima and Sony partnered for a second game in the series, giving fans Death Stranding 2: On the Beach earlier this year. By nearly all accounts, it’s a step up on the original, better delivering on Kojima Productions’ vision of a post-apocalyptic, open-world adventure. It’s also even better looking than the first game, if you can believe it.

That’s not the end of the fruitful partnership. In 2024, Kojima and Sony announced Physint. We don’t know too much about this upcoming action game. All Kojima Productions has really said is that it’s an “espionage project.” That, understandable, made Metal Gear Solid fans excited, but we’ll have to wait and see if Kojima and his team can recapture that magic. Unfortunately, we’ll likely be waiting a few more years, as Physint hasn’t even revealed what console it’s coming to.

Meanwhile, Kojima Productions is working on two Death Stranding films. One is in production with Hammerstone Studios and A24, the studio behind movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once, Civil War, and Uncut Gems. The other movie, tentatively titled Death Stranding: Mosquito, is in co-production with ABC Animation Studio. Neither project even has a release window, so you shouldn’t expect them soon either.

Finally, Kojima Productions is working on another game, but not with Sony. OD, an upcoming horror project, is being developed alongside Xbox Game Studios and is co-written by Kojima and Jordan Peele. Like Physint, Kojima Productions has yet to reveal consoles, though with the direction Microsoft is going, it seems likely it won’t be an Xbox exclusive when it finally sees the light of day.

Death Stranding served as an exceptional finale for the PlayStation 4, while also giving Kojima Productions a better start to its catalog than most developers dream of. With so many projects in the works, it’s easy to forget where things started, but the first Death Stranding is a beacon of what happens when a star developer is given enough time and money to deliver on their vision.

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