XBOX CALLS SONY BROKE AND STEALS THEIR DEV

PlayStation announced Physint in early 2024 with studio boss Herman Hulst doing the honors on the Columbia Pictures lot, which in hindsight was a lot of pageantry for a game they'd cancel. In mid-June, per Kojima, his studio "unexpectedly received notice" that PlayStation Studios was pulling the plug. Sony's public statement called it a "difficult decision to step away." Jason Schreier got the actual math at Bloomberg. The budget was climbing fast even though the game is still years from release, deadlines kept slipping, and Death Stranding and its sequel both missed Sony's internal revenue expectations. The real sticking point was exclusivity. Sony didn't want to drop hundreds of millions on another game that wouldn't stay locked to its hardware, and both Death Stranding games were timed exclusives that wandered off to other platforms later. Kojima Productions owns the franchises, so Sony was renting. Kojima then spent three months shopping the project and landed at Xbox, which will publish it on console and PC and also grabbed the film and TV rights to Physint and to OD, the horror game with Jordan Peele. Xbox's line to Bloomberg: "Betting on Kojima-san is an easy call." That is a hell of a thing to say about a bet the other guy just folded.

Why you should give a shit: Sony saved itself a nine-figure risk and handed its loudest auteur, his next two games and the movie rights to the console it spent twenty years beating, which is a bargain right up until the trailer drops with a green logo on it.