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Update []:
Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier has responded to Hideo Kojima’s latest round of interviews, saying Physint’s cancellation came “after months of negotiations between Kojima Productions and Sony”.
In the interviews outlined within, Kojima alludes to being shocked and surprised by PlayStation’s decision to pull funding on the game.
Here’s Schreier’s response in full:
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“I saw the statement from Kojima Productions today — it doesn’t dispute any of our reporting so I don’t have much to add there. But I will add that (as I said a couple weeks ago), the Physint cancellation came after several months of negotiations between KoPro and Sony. Wasn’t exactly out of nowhere.”
Asked if the negotiations between Kojima and Sony were about the potential cancellation of the game, Schreier adds:
“I don’t know if the threat of cancellation came up but the negotiations were over missed deadlines and the fundamentals of the project, not just tangential stuff.”
My full report on Kojima’s various interviews continues below.
Original Story: In the aftermath of the Tokyo Game Show, a couple of timely interviews from Hideo Kojima have been published simultaneously by IGN and the Washington Post (paywalled).
They’ve also been deployed alongside a statement from Kojima Productions itself, which encourages fans to take recent reporting from Bloomberg’s uber-reliable Jason Schreier with “a dose of scepticism”.
God, there’s a lot to get into here, so where should we even begin?
Well, it’s worth noting that both interviews appear to have been conducted after the announcement that Sony was pulling funding on Physint but before Schreier’s aforementioned expose.
That’s critical information, I think, because had the interviews had taken place later, I think it would have changed the questioning.
As it happens neither IGN nor Washington Post appear to have been given a follow-up, and instead have been handed the same statement Kojima Productions posted on social media.
But first, some background: last week, dramatically, Sony announced that it had pulled out of the Physint project, which it was funding. Xbox subsequently revealed that it would publish the game instead.
In the interview, Kojima reveals that he was told about PlayStation’s decision to pull funding via a Zoom call in June, which was originally delayed because he was attending a Prada event in New York at the time.
He told IGN:
“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.”
It was during that Zoom call that Sony notified him of its decision, although according to Kojima he has never been given a reason for it.
Kojima reiterates multiple times throughout the interviews that he “loves” Sony, and the dev’s statement says that it retains a “strong” relationship with the manufacturer.
However, while Bloomberg originally reported that the reason for the breakdown in the relationship between Kojima and PlayStation was partly due to multiformat plans for the project, the auteur won’t say whether the game will come to PS6.
Asked if the game will ever come to PlayStation in the future, he gave a non-answer:
“I don’t know the answer to that – that would be a question for Xbox. But I don't know for sure. In previous updates from Xbox, I thought that they have this kind of stance where they want to deliver to as many gamers as possible, no matter what the platform is. I think all of that will be announced at a later time. I'm not sure yet, and I can't really say.”
Indeed, it sounds like this project is incredibly early, and Kojima hasn’t even decided on an engine yet.
Asked if the game would use Guerrilla’s proprietary Decima, he said he’s still “experimenting”.
In fact, despite confirmation of Bill Skarsberg’s casting this week, it doesn’t sound like Physint is actually in full production yet.
Gene Park from the Washington Post writes:
“Kojima said he has written out the plot and game concept for Physint, complete with storyboards, and the studio has started to create 3D models, along with scanning its cast of actors, including just-announced star Bill Skarsgard. Kojima said he’s currently experimenting with various engines but nothing is set in stone.”
Kojima apparently kept news of PlayStation’s cancellation from his staff for a short period, before eventually coming clean and promising his team he’d find funding elsewhere.
It sounds like he did take the project to third-party publishers first, but those discussions didn’t really go anywhere.
It’s interesting because Bloomberg also reported that Sony had concerns about IP ownership, as it fully funded both Death Stranding games but doesn’t actually own anything at all.
However, in the case of Physint it sounds like Xbox has a say in the wider use of the IP moving forwards, which if true is an interesting compromise.
Kojima told IGN:
“The biggest thing [about Xbox and Kojima Productions’ common vision was] they're not thinking of just funding a game. They're thinking about movies and anime. It's more about the IP. Let's create a new IP. And that's bigger in scale, so to speak. And not many other game publishers or game developers have that kind of vision.”
I wonder if Kojima was originally playing hard ball with Sony, not expecting the platform holder to pull out. Then when it did, he had to scale back his demands in order to secure funding from another publisher.
If that’s the case, it does seem a little sad that Kojima and PlayStation couldn’t compromise, only for him to then make those concessions with another partner instead – but that’s purely my speculation on the situation, reading between the lines.
In its statement, Kojima Productions says we shouldn’t look too deeply into Schreier’s report for Bloomberg, as none of its statements were made “on the record”.
It reads:
“None of the claims written came from any official or on-the-record source and as such we encourage you to take them with a dose of scepticism.”
It doesn’t actually deny any of the claims that Physint was running over budget and behind schedule, although it does promise that the studio is “healthy” and “profitable”.
One other thing that jumped out to me in the reporting, and may complicate some fans’ feelings, is that it sounds like maligned ex-PlayStation executive Jim Ryan was a big believer in Physint.
Kojima claims the pair “shook hands” on the project, and he implies that the suit’s retirement may have contributed to Sony ultimately pulling funding.
I’d recommend you read both the IGN and Washington Post articles if you’d like to know more, but I suspect this story is going to run and run – especially seeing as Physint feels to me like it’s potentially four or five years away at the earliest.