In June, Sony asked Hideo Kojima to attend a Zoom call. At the time, he was busy working on Xbox game OD and PlayStation game Physint, the latter a spiritual successor to the video game series that made him one of the most celebrated developers on the planet: Metal Gear Solid.
For the meeting, he brought along Kojima Productions president Shinji Hirano and head of talent development Aki Saito. Kojima tells IGN in his first interview since last week’s dramatic news that he was so stunned by what Sony told him that his mind went blank. PlayStation was pulling out of the Physint project, and funding for it would end. And that was that.
Kojima initially kept the news from his staff at Kojima Productions as he worried over the future of his company. Would he have to let developers from the Physint team go? Would they leave anyway, given what had happened? What would the bank, whose loans helped Kojima Productions staff up after the release of Death Stranding, think? And what about all the actors he’d already scanned for Physint? Was this a P.T. situation all over again?
As we know, Kojima convinced Microsoft and new Xbox boss Asha Sharma to pick up Physint in one of the most dramatic console switches in history. Now the previous PlayStation exclusive may not release on PlayStation at all.
In our interview, Kojima tells IGN Japan’s Daniel Robson how he feared Kojima Productions might collapse as a result of Sony's decision, and details his game-saving pitch to Xbox, which was quick to snap Physint up.
It’s important to note that the interview was conducted before Bloomberg’s report that Sony ditched Physint due to missed deadlines, budget concerns, and Death Stranding’s alleged commercial failings. Kojima Productions provided a statement to IGN, which appears at the end of this interview, following a request for comment. In it, Kojima Productions insists the studio is "in a healthy, profitable state, development for Physint continues to move forward with Xbox, and our relationship with PlayStation remains strong."
Hideo Kojima: We are an independent company, so no funding is behind us as a corporation. We sign contracts according to projects, and that's how we survive one by one as an indie. So I need to find a new project before the previous project ends, and that's how we stay alive. That's our background situation.
So in June, SIE said they wanted to have a Zoom call. I was so busy at that time — I had just gone to New York for a Prada event and then to LA right after. But anyway, I came back and we had this Zoom call.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/hideo-kojima-reveals-what-happened-with-sony-in-exclusive-first-interview-since-playstation-ditched-physint
