Hideo Kojima’s upcoming stealth-action game Physint, which is meant to be a spiritual successor to the Metal Gear Solid series, has now been picked up by Xbox following PlayStation’s attempt to cancel the game. Back in 2024, PlayStation ended its first State of Play of the year by announcing a major new partnership with Kojima Productions that would see Kojima returning to work on the “action-espionage” genre. The project immediately became one of the most exciting on the horizon for PlayStation, as it called back to the lonstanding relationship between Kojima and Sony that began with the launch of Metal Gear Solid on PS1. Now, shockingly, PlayStation has revealed that it pushed to scrap Physint entirely earlier this year, which has resulted in the game now shifting to Xbox.
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In a post shared by PlayStation across social media, the gaming giant said that it had “made the difficult decision to step away from collaborating with Kojima Productions on its project Physint.” PlayStation went on to stress that it still had a strong relationship with Kojima himself, but the famed game creator didn’t suggest as much.
In his own retelling of events, Kojima said that PlayStation had suddenly approached him and his studio in June of this year with the intent to cancel Physint. Due to how important the upcoming game is for Kojima Productions, Kojima said he immediately began looking for a new partner to help ensure that the project would remain alive. Fortunately, after months of talking to various companies, Kojima said that it had opted to move forward with Xbox, which would now serve as the publisher of Physint.
“Physint is an important project both to me personally and to Kojima Productions,” Kojima said of the matter. “Determined to keep the project alive, we have spent the last three months searching tirelessly for a new partner. In the course of seeking advice and pursuing negotiations with people across many fields, we found in Xbox a partner with whom we share a common vision for the future, and we have decided to team up with them once again.”
As Kojima alluded to, this means that Kojima Productions is now partnered with Xbox on both of its upcoming games in OD and Physint. OD has been the primary focus of Kojima Productions for quite some time, and is Kojima’s long-awaited entry into the horror genre. For Xbox to now pick up Physint as well makes Xbox the new home of Kojima and his games, which is quite a big deal for the company as it moves into the next generation of hardware with Project Helix.
As for PlayStation, the beloved brand continues to make a multitude of decisions that are upsetting its most hardcore fans. Between the decision to kill off physical games in 2028 and now attempt to end a project from Kojima, PlayStation is making moves than no one would have expected just a few years back. Whether or not it can win back some of its fans before the launch of the PS6 remains to be seen, but the company as a whole is likely in its worst place from an optics standpoint in well over a decade.
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