Just the other day, Hideo Kojima dropped a bombshell by announcing that his in-development espionage game, Physint, will be moving from PlayStation to Xbox.
What’s surprising to hear is that Sony canceled the project on their end three months ago, and Kojima spent that time shopping the game to another publisher.
Now, a new report has surfaced explaining why PlayStation dropped Kojima’s spiritual successor to Metal Gear.
Death Stranding Games Didn’t Meet Revenue Expectations From Sony
In a new report by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, it mentions how PlayStation pulled out of Physint due to budget concerns, and other factors such as the Death Stranding games not meeting Sony’s revenue expectations.
When it comes to Physint, it mentioned how the project has missed deadlines and was on track to be well over budget despite the game not releasing anytime soon.
Another major factor in the decision to splinter away from Kojima was PlayStation’s reluctance to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in another game that wouldn’t be a permanent exclusive to Sony’s own gaming hardware. Both Death Stranding and its sequel were timed PlayStation exclusives, which were released on other platforms. Ownership of the IP, remained with Kojima Productions, and this would be the case for Physint as well.
On the other side of the coin, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma saw Physint as a good investment opportunity, since they are planning to release the title on both Xbox and PC. Earlier this year, Sony decided to pull back from releasing its single-player games on PC, and while there will be PlayStation-published games appearing on other platforms, it’s mostly for online-focused games such as Helldivers 2 and Marathon.
While this is from an unofficial report, Schreier has been very reliable on these things, and what he shares does make a lot of sense. Still, if you consider how Sony poured hundreds of millions into titles such as Concord, it makes it hard to stomach that the spiritual successor of Metal Gear is something Sony is willing to walk away from.
Not to mention that a stealth action game from the mind behind Metal Gear would be a far easier sell than Death Stranding’s delivery/walking simulator theme — at least to me anyway.
Whatever the case might be, stealth fans will probably need a capable PC in the coming years or an Xbox in order to experience Kojima’s follow-up to the Metal Gear franchise.
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Alex Co
Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.
