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.
They said they can no longer fund development for Physint. I was shocked and I said, “What did you say?” I couldn’t quite process what they had said. I wasn’t sure because I was in shock.
Anyway, I know there’s a lot of news in the game industry that many studios are closing down, many titles are canceled, and I understand the situation in the industry as a whole. But I thought Physint was okay. That Physint was safe. So I was surprised. But not just surprised. We didn’t understand the reason. I didn’t have any anger or sadness; my first thought was, “What am I going to do with my studio?” Because we signed contracts for projects. Of course I had OD, but I only have two projects in my studio: OD and Physint. And I hire according to how many projects we have, and we have two. If we lose one contract, I thought I might have to cut all the people working on Physint, right? Or our studio could end up collapsing because we’ll run out of cashflow.
I’ve borrowed money from the bank for funding as well. At first [when we established the studio] they didn’t listen to us at all. After a while when we got a title out, they were like, “We’ll lend you money.” If they find out that a project has been stopped or canceled, we’d be in big trouble. So my mind went blank when SIE told me. I don’t remember so much of that meeting, to be honest with you. And my colleagues probably don’t remember as well, so I can’t really answer if you ask me what exactly they said.
Nothing could’ve prepared me for their decision to step away from the project. So I thought, “What am I going to do from tomorrow?” But from my side, I love Sony. And I don’t have any bad feelings against them because I know that it’s a tough time in the game industry.
I’ve been working with them for like 30 years… Mr. Ken Kutaragi, Mr. Hirai, I was close with them. But it’s not like that recently. I realized that, okay, this is the reality. It’s the 10th anniversary of my studio. My studio might collapse, right?
But the number one priority is my staff. We have about 200 people, and I expanded because we had Physint. They are talented, of course. And some of them came to my studio from big corporations. I warned them it might not be a good idea to do so… But anyways, I needed to protect these important staff. I’ve also begun scanning actors for the project and also speaking with artists about collaborating for Physint. I can’t really tell them the game has been canceled. I didn’t want to do the same thing we did for P.T. Of course, I didn’t want them to worry.
For me personally, it’s the 10th anniversary of the studio and also my 40th anniversary of creating games, so that’s why I put so much on Physint. It’s like a culmination of the two. During the pandemic, I was a little unwell and I thought about how much time I have left. I really thought that I would give my all to Physint at this point in my career. I really wanted to continue this project even after that meeting. I was thinking, “What should I do?”
Another big thing I thought about is that, I became independent and made my own studio, and a lot of people have done the same. But, no one has been super successful, no matter where they are in the world. But I believe that the trend of this era should be one in which creators can do their own independent projects and become big. But if Kojima Productions collapses, that doesn’t follow this trend at all. It’s a step backwards for indies. So I needed to stand firm and continue this project. My mind went blank, but I decided to think, “Okay, understood,” and became determined to continue Physint in some way.
True story: after the meeting, the first thing I did was, I came back to my desk, and I started to write and add a little bit more to the concept for Physint. What had just happened was a big thing, a big incident. And so I decided to just keep it between the three of us [Hideo Kojima, Shinji Hirano and Aki Saito] for now, and we didn’t tell the staff, because we needed to figure out a direction before telling anyone. So in the next couple of days, we were always thinking about teaming up with first-parties, but I thought maybe we could change directions. Maybe we could team up with third-party or other partners.
I thought just bringing a pitch of a game title and saying, “Can you fund this?” is a very old-fashioned way of doing things… Instead, I thought that the way to go was to say, “I’m making this new IP, and I want to consider everything like movies, dramas, anime, TV, comics, music. Let’s create a new IP with all of this included.” I was thinking about who to pitch to, and I was thinking of not just the game industry, but the movie industry, movie studios, and also streaming companies and things like that. Because in the end, I think because we’re all digital, these industries are all coming together with games in some form.
So I started approaching people and everyone had positive reactions, so I had a good feeling about it. But I also thought, it’s not just the money we needed. We also needed technical support, marketing support, holding playtests and things like that. And we can’t do this all internally. So I was thinking, who could support all this?
I approached Xbox and they were great. They could support us technically. And also we’ve been working on OD with them, so we already had a connection. I made a proper pitch of Physint to them. And then their first reaction was like, “This pitch was fantastic. Never seen a pitch like this!” And that’s how it started with Xbox.
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