‘I was just shocked and surprised’: Hideo Kojima says Sony told him Physint was being cancelled over a Zoom call

Hideo Kojima has shed more light on what happened when Sony told him it was cancelling his Physint project.

Physint was previously set to be published by PlayStation Studios, but earlier this month Kojima Productions moved the game’s production over to Xbox instead, after stating that PlayStation had tried to cancel the project.

At the time of the announcement, Kojima said he had “unexpectedly received notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the Physint project”, while Sony said it had “made the difficult decision to step away from collaborating with Kojima Productions on its project Physint”.

Now, in an interview with The Washington Post, Kojima and studio president Shinji Hirano have spoken more about the moment they were told about Sony’s plans to cancel the project.

The pair say Sony delivered the news to them in mid-June via a Zoom call, but have declined to confirm who exactly it was at Sony who made the call.

“I just went totally blank when they told me,” Hirano recalled (via an interpreter). “The biggest surprise was Hideo’s actions after that. He went back to his room and started working.”

Kojima explained (also via an interpreter) that rather than feeling angry or upset, he was more concerned about his staff at Kojima Productions, of which there are nearly 200.

“I was just shocked and surprised,” he told the publication. “I didn’t have any anger or sadness. I was just thinking ‘what should I do?’. It’s a big problem for us and I couldn’t tell staff at the time.”