Last week PlayStation made another bold move and announced they would no longer be funding and collaborating with Kojima Productions on the action espionage game PHYSINT.

"An update from PlayStation Studios: 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.

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."

Hideo Kojima would make his own statement too, describing the cancellation as unexpected:

As confirmed earlier through our official channels, in mid-June of this year, we unexpectedly received notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the PHYSINT project. PHYSINT is an important project both to me personally and to KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS. 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. Please rest assured that development of PHYSINT, our genre-defining action-espionage title, is ongoing and will continue moving forward.

When looking at Sony' behavior this year though, I don't think the break up with PHYSINT and Kojima is all that surprising. PlayStation is acting like it is in a damage control mode. Their plan for an abundance of live service titles as failed. Many studio acquisitions have been the equivalent of lighting piles of money on fire. They are subletting Bungie's office space for goodness sake!

Marvel's Wolverine has shipped to middling acclaim and stern criticism. Fairgame$ (now Break In?) has had gameplay leak and it sure looks like Fortnite and Payday had a baby. Perhaps God of War: Laufey will save us until Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet arrives.

A difference with those and Kojima's Death Stranding titles and PHYSINT is that Kojima's games are not console exclusive. They have or will eventually get ported to PC and Xbox. Sony's not too keen these days on multiplatform releases.

Jason Schreier [wrote](these days) for Bloomberg about the split, citing the exclusivity as an issue, as well as missed milestones and a gargantuan budget. Schreier also made a video about the same topic, if the gift link expires.

"One major factor behind the decision was the commercial performance of Kojima’s previous two games, Death Stranding and its sequel, which didn’t meet PlayStation’s revenue expectations, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing information that’s not public.

But the new project has also missed deadlines and was on track to be well over budget despite being years away from release, the people said."

Procrasination pays off because this morning, Xbox had there Tokyo Game Show presentation and they crammed in a near five minute video from Kojima with the smallest possible update on OD Knock and a form of news for PHYSINT. The lead actor is not Robert Pattinson like I hoped, but Bill Skarsgård.

This rapid pivot to Xbox makes me wonder how far along the tech stack was on Sony's side for PHYSINT. I went back and watched the original announcement and Hulst said this toward the end, which is real funny in hindsight:

"We're all are really excited about this project and we will fully support you with the latest innovation Sony has to offer."

That innovation angle comes off as using more of the Decima engine, which Kojima Productions used for the Death Stranding games. For OD Knock, the studio is using Unreal Engine 5 and their Metahuman technology. On the new poster for PHYSINT, the Xbox and Metahuman logos are quite prominent.

image

I suspect the game was not all that far along technology wise. It still gives me immense pre-production vibes what with Death Stranding 2 coming out last year and OD Knock somehow still not close to done. An engine switch like this doesn't seem too big a task this early on.

More telling to me from the poster and the Tokyo Game Show video is how movie-eque the PHYSINT material is. Kojima's original pitch for the game with PlayStation happened on the Columbia Pictures lot and was described with a "hope to transcend the barriers between film and video games."

"Of course, it is an interactive game, but it is also a movie at the same time, in terms of look, story, theme, cast, acting, fashion, and sound. With this title, we hope to transcend the barriers between film and video games."

Kojima appears to be going even deeper in his love for film and marrying it with video games.