Sony Stopped Physint Development Over Budget, Exclusivity Concerns

So basically the company who spent $3 billion on Bungie and $400+ million on Concord is NOW getting cold feet about Kojima’s next big thing and probably won’t get neither of his next games.
Such an absolute fumble.

But please, give us more live service games.

This is a wise move because irrational spending must be stopped as soon as possible especially if you're working with a man who is yet to prove himself in the gaming industry.

Fair points, if true. Why pay all of that money if the game won't remain exclusive, and if it's already behind schedule and overbudget (and production is just getting started), those are all solid business reasons to cancel it, no matter how much of a "visionary" Kojima is.

@Czar_Khastik That’s one of your most savage burns yet. I was trying to think of something similar to say but yours is the ‘end all’ of scathing wit.

Well Kojima does have expensive tastes and loves to shoehorn all his celebrity mates in his games...

As i expected Kojima yet again going way over budget and missing deadlines. This is why Konami binned him they had enough of his taking the piss BS.

I don’t understand why everyone is so upset about this. Sure it’s a bad look but it’s not even a first party game. Kojima will be alright and it’s not as if his last two games were bangers. Better to pull the plug now before they get too far into the process to find another publisher.

@MasterChiefWiggum Because that was the contract that was negotiated with Kojima Productions from the start, same as Death Stranding 1 and 2 were apparently fine to be multiplatform?

I mean, it just reads like they changed the terms of the bargain, and also weren't happy that Death Stranding didn't make monster mega bucks.

@Czar_Khastik youre a sony shareholder? Why this is a concern for you and not have incredibles games available?

@MFTWrecks i know its a joke

@IllusiveMan Death Stranding 2 under-performed. Maybe Sony didn't want to spend millions upon millions on Hollywood casts as well.

@MaajorVit i think hes being sarcastic lol

No, this is just the piece Sony said to cover their end.

Lets be honest, a company that made Marathon and lots of other live service flops would even care about a game going over budget or missing deadlines at this point in time? They are still betting on Horizon Fortnite Knockoff and Fairgame$ ffs.

Anyone who thinks this is a fumble doesn't understand business.

I love kojima but his games are expensive to make, and we know they don't sell as much as people like to think they do.

Sony can't fumble anymore and they've made to many fumbles

@Dan12836666 im terrible at noticing sarcasm through text

The lesson learned here is DON’T ANNOUNCE YOUR GAMES WAY TOO EARLY

We live in the worst PlayStation timeline where pretentious, boring, corpo muppets run this company now.

PlayStation can't shut the **** up about how much money they're making and how much record profit they're seeing, but they're also so concerned about their bottom line that they burn their bridges with someone synonymous with their culture and legacy. The billions they're going to rake in on the sports games, gacha games, CoD, and GTA 6 seriously could not have offset some of this? We have to get rid of Kojima's MGS successor, but obvious incoming flops like Fairgames, 4:LOOP, and Horizon: Hunter's Gathering continue to get funding? Marathon and Bungie continue to get millions poured into them for next to no positive returns? Millions of dollars spent on pretentious marketing ads with celebrities and loud CGI crap that has nothing to do with PlayStation? But Hideo Kojima and a Metal Gear Solid successor are considered problems in that building?

**** off. Hermen Hulst getting booted isn't enough anymore. This whole company needs a creative and managerial reset.

EDIT: It's so rich and insane to me to see people defending this for reasons like "profit gotta profit" (as if PlayStation is some poverty-stricken brand and not a global powerhouse) and expressing understanding for draconian early 2010's era KONAMI ditching Kojima. Seriously, guys, it's okay to bash PlayStation a little and not circle the wagons. Trust me, you'll live.

Look, I don't mind exclusives and all but KojiPro is an independent company so expecting Physint to be exclusive to PlayStation is absolute BS. We live in a time where 3rd party publishers are no longer doing exclusives (maybe some few) and had to release games multiplat. Sony may have been investing on Physint but if they want the game to be successful, it had to go multiplat.

On the other hand, they think investing in their live-service games is still way better than banking on Kojima despite the fact that people are not happy with their direction. Sony really have lost their mind at this point.

Makes sense considering their previous financial disasters. Being over budget and off-target already is not great for a game coming out in the mid 2030s. Not to mention Kojima is always simultaneously working on OD.

Even then, I’m still hopeful that Physint will release on PlayStation because it’s a very different thing to release a game on the platform than having them publish a finance said game.

@CielloArc yes, they would. Especially after making Marathon and lots of other live service flops.

@ShadowRJ While I agree, that has nothing to do with budgets.

@MaajorVit and me as well i wasnt being funny sorry i know myself included i struggle with things in text

If this game is, even if timed, exclusive, sony just gave the PT/silent hills and MGS espiritual successors to XBOX.

Great move Herman

Ppl need to wake up, Asha sharma its not Phil spencer, shes a young ambitious executive, and sony just handed one of the most prestigious game dev on a Silver plate to her.

@Balaam_ Thanks mate, it's been a busy Friday for me so I'm just letting off steam here. Wish you a shiny new platinum for the weekend!

@MaajorVit I'm just being Czar Khastik, but I know it is hard to tell sometimes considering it really is just text without intonation.

@Ashina considering that they cancelled most of them already, I very much doubt they have hopes for any of them at this point.

@CielloArc I see you dont quite understand business.

This is exactly why Konami had to get rid of him, he spends way to much for masterpieces which really dont have the selling power.

He has just become this legend within and people just forget the facts

@MaajorVit she hasn't proven anything yet. Her age doesn't mean much at all.

Gamers: Why is Sony wasting money on Live Service and overpriced Bungie

Also Gamers: Why Didn't Sony waste money on a bloated, over budget milestone missing Kojima game that won't be out for years to come?

Kojima is spreading himself too thin. He's working on 2 games and a movie at once, probably more that we don't know about.

"The game also wouldn't have remained a permanent exclusive"

And there we have the biggest reason.

It’s almost as if Sony is speedrunning its own reputation into the ground. In 2013, they successfully positioned themselves as the consumer-friendly “saviour of gaming” and built up a tremendous amount of goodwill, only to gradually squander it.

The funny thing is, I don’t think Sony ever fundamentally changed that much from the PS3 era. They simply got much better at presenting themselves, while a fiercely loyal fanbase carried the brand and defended almost every decision they made. Now some of those same consumers are finding out that corporate loyalty is rarely rewarded in kind.

@AdamNovice Kojima is widely recognized and celebrated by the gaming incrowd. It could've still been a prestige project for Sony. If they didn't piss their money away on GaaS this could've been saved easily.

Those people spent 300$ million dollar on this corridor simulator called Wolverine, and yet funding the spiritual successor to Metal freaking Gear Solid, one of the franchise that MADE them who they are, is too expensive ?

Are they for real ?

@MaajorVit Kojima was already working with Xbox on OD, they just got a second game to spend crazy money on with zero dev management.

@Ashina most likely because sales from other platforms don't go to PS pockets but to KojiPro (probably because PS won't publish it on Xbox or PC) since it's not going to be a PS exclusive but Kojima's own IP. So why invest further to a studio not under your umbrella especially when it's going above the budget?

Let's face it, Kojima may be a brilliant mind but I think his latest works no longer have the usual appeal it had since MGS.

And as for PS, they can invest on those appalling live services since it's their own studios doing it. They can control the flow of money on those while 3rd party partnerships are usually limited investments only.

Its one or the other you can not be understanding of Sony cutting Kojima lose over money while berating them for having an insane live service push. Both of them are just about money and if money if all you are interested in as a supposed video game fan then I don't know what to think.

"Sony didn't think Physint would move numbers"

Physint was announced many years after Death Stranding released. Sony had clear numbers on what a new Kojima IP would sell.

"Kojima delayed the game and went over budget"

This has been well-documented since his Konami days. You still went to bed with him because he's the biggest auteur in gaming. Why back off now?

"Sony didn't like the game eventually releasing on PC"

Again, these were the same terms you funded Death Stranding on many years ago. You knew it from the start.

"The game got too expensive"

You're funding failed live services from studios based on California, Washington State and Europe. But the Japanese labour was bridge too far?

@get2sammyb He might if he feels burned by Sony. Also, given that he was struggling to find more funding, exclusivity might have been a condition for Xbox's involvement. Hopefully not the case, though.

@MasterChiefWiggum yeah he wouldn't make it exclusive to playstation so went to Xbox and made it exclusive there instead , weird

@ShadowRJ i mean its partly our fualt that happens and by our i mean people in general becuase people are impatient and want to hear about the next thing as soon as possible regardless of how far away it is.

as i supposed too many money wasted on hollywood fantasies and kojima don't want to make exclusives anymore.
let xbox waste their money, the games are coming to playstation anyway.

sony will use the money for more first party games.
sounds good to me.

@Oram77 not in this case, but this thing was announced over a year before Death Stranding 2 came out. A lot of this drama couldve been avoided had PlayStation not been so eager to boast about it at the end of State of Play.

@Staroceanblue I wonder about that. I don't think it was revealed that it will be a "forever" Xbox exclusive, but if so, that WOULD be weird, as it will likely not recoup its investment being confined to Xbox and due to GamePass.

Can't wait to see how it reviews.

@Theamazing1 I’ll argue that’s the case in some situations. Metroid Prime 4 for instance, I think had Nintendo not announced that until it was ready, fans would’ve been screaming and kicking.

Physint though? Death Stranding 2 wasn’t even out yet. We were still waiting for that.

@MaajorVit I would argue that Sony just handed Xbox a lot of debt. They are now funding OD AND Physint, 2 expensive games that Xbox does not have the install base to support. And the games will likey come to PS a year or so later anyway.

Kojima probably wants to keep the rights to the IP and to help fill out a catalogue for his company, I don't blame him for not wanting to just hand it all off to Sony so they can make it exclusive. Look at Bloodborne for example.

I think that these are actually good reasons. People can go on about the big loss of money due to live service fiasco but also need to understand that scrappy investment lost a lot of money that can never been recouped. Therefore any game in the portfolio now needs to male a profit because they must have wasted a billion salt least so far and I don't think any company could really afford that, and then to fund a game where they are not going to get a good return once it goes multi plat.

Gamers: Sony doesn’t want to waste on a non first party game that will end up on Xbox so it’s the live service games faults some of you guys here are so illogical.

A game like death stranding 2 is an absurdly lavish anomaly that I can’t help but admire, love and respect.
I often wondered about how much it might have costed but PlayStation really shouldn’t, as they are throwing money out of the window on projects that have half the chances and 1/1000 the pedigree. Maybe don’t get the marketing rights for GTA6 (people will play it on PS anyway) or pursue a full bouquet of ill-fated GAS projects…just splurge on a gamer’s game like this. It could be the next big thing and either way, it will give you prestige.

The true auteur soars miles above such mundane pettinesses like budget and deadlines.

Sony is embarrassing right now you give x box a free game.word up son

It’s very apparent Sony is trimming the fat. I liked death stranding 2, but it didn’t even sell 3 million copies, and it’s reported that it very likely didn’t turn a profit.

People wanna bash them in here for Concorde and whatever but you can see Sony wasn’t happy with it and what did they do? They shut it down and that’s what they’re doing here, well, they’re shutting down their money investing in it.

I wonder considering they’ve likely already invested money in it and they wanted to cancel it, Does that mean they are still gonna get a part of the profits if it turns one because part of its development was funded by Sony?

Is it not very apparent to everyone that what Sony is doing right now is tightening their belt?

@get2sammyb Unless Sony also didn't want it on PC.

I feel like they should have known that this was going to be an expensive endeavor from the start. It's Kojima. The entire reason Konami split with him is because the man doesn't take budget into account enough for his work. As great as his work is, he does have expensive tastes. Always has.

The concern now is if this thing will actually release at all. Xbox doesn't exactly have the best track record for seeing expensive projects through to completion either. (See Perfect Dark)

I hope it does. Only time will tell.

Oscar winning auteur created massive budgeted movies are still being produced despite braindead superhero movies making hundreds of times more profit. Is that all you want from gaming? Just blindly accept the continued pursuit of money over everything that made us love gaming in the first place. Just take it on the chin that none of us here are an audience any company wants because by showing the barest minimum of interest we are no longer that walking wallet that they want?

It's clear Kojima can't develop two games simultaneously, and if his two games are Xbox console exclusives then im sure his studio won't be around much longer.

@DennisReynolds It’s fairly disappointing to read it didn’t meet their expectations but 2.5M copies sold is more than most recent PS Studios games and I doubt it actually caused losses at Sony unlike so many of their live-service initiatives.

But let’s not kid ourselves thinking Sony struck a deal with Kojima to make blockbusters that sell on the tens of millions, they perfectly knew what games he makes and their cost, they paid for the prestige of having more games in the GOTY discussion and no one can deny they got it, personally I consider both games as the best of each year and I like them more than ANY game from PS Studios this generation.

I actually think the exclusivity agreement and keeping the IP to be more valid reason to end the partnership, but I’m still shocked they didn’t even try to negotiate different terms but rather move to outright cancel the project.

Exactly how a lot of us - except the let's just rage overreacting crowd - imagined when the news broke. Sorry sorry sorry Kojima, but realistically Sony is right on this.

Well, the studio had too many projects in the pipeline. And one has to wonder how much of that budget was being funneled into OD.

Sounds like MGSV all over again.

Leaving aside the whole issue of the prestige factor of having Kojima partnering with your console, to be fair to Sony this did look like a massive financial risk. Funding a studio until 2030, for a game that’s an unknown entity, that you don’t even own the IP! Ruining the numbers it probably decided it simply wasn’t worth it.

Look, I'm first to bash Sony, but this time I can't blame them. Chronical westaboo probably spent billions on scanning Hollywood celebrities.

In spite of being bitter about the direction PlayStation has taken recently, I can sort of understand the logic behind the decision here. I don't think DeaS really made waves, and these projects do seem to be overtly frivolous and (with respect to budget) particularly bloated.

@CielloArc Jason Scheirer is considered reliable and reputable, would be unusual for him to report on something that's false.
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Look how much money they’re spaffed up the wall on nonsense. And this is where they draw the line? I hope they enjoy their future of single player games making zero dent critically and meandering along commercially.

About what I expected on issues of missed deadlines and an ever-inflating budget. With some of the absurd excess and ego on display in the Death Stranding franchise - convincing me, personally, that while Kojima has a sharp eye for gameplay design, he's an abysmal writer and director without editorial oversight - it isn't surprising that it'd ultimately end the same way as his time with Konami.

Konami were an awful publisher around the time of MGSV, and only now seem to be righting the ship, but axing him back then was absolutely the right call in retrospect. So is this, marking a rare good decision by Sony of late. And no doubt Microsoft will find themselves in the same boat eventually in partnering with him, too.

@Czar_Khastik I am praying this is sarcasm

Sorry but i don't buy Jason Schemer source / report.

1. "Missed deadline"
Surely Sony knows really well that Kojima was also working to finished Death Stranding 2 at the time they announced Physint in January 2024. And there's SAG-AFTRA Strike at the end of 2023 and 2024 which delayed all Kojima projects. So how on earth Physint missed the deadline???

And Fairgames and Intergalactic are MIA for years. Intergalactic even missed deadline for a demo. But both project are still alive. So this decision to cut off Physint doesn't make sense.

2. "Death Stranding 1 and 2 didn't meet Sony revenue expectation"
Last time i check Kojima report DS 1 at 19 million copies and profitable to fund DS 2. And DS 2 is estimated at 2 million copies in less than a year. Those numbers are much higher than Bungie Marathon, the mega flop Concord, and Saros. But what exactly Sony's expectation for Death Stranding? It feels like they have crazier sales expectation than Square-Enix.

3. "Permanent exclusive"
Since when Sony care that much about permanent exclusives from 3rd party studios? Helldivers 2 released on PC and Xbox, soon Stellar Blade 1 will release for Switch 2, and even Lego Horizon also released for Switch. But i don't see Sony came out and say we're done with Shift Up and Arrowhead.

3. "On track over budget"
Is Physint already enter full production cause last time i check Kojima only done with the mocap for some actors. So i don't understand how the project is on track for over budget?

And like @IllusiveMan said. Sony spent $400 million for mega flop Concord and $3 Billion for Bungie. But suddenly they got cold feet funding Kojima project which have chances to sell well?

Again. I'm not buying Schemer report and it sounds like some misdirection to put all the blame on Kojima and not Sony Hermen and Nishino who's dragging Playstation through the mud in the last three months.

@NxtDoc that’s actually a brilliant point! As both Sony and Microsoft has invested in game development with Kojima Studios how could they be sure their funding was ring-fenced and not paying for the other partner game?! ❓

A lot of publisher's have been open in the past that sometimes it's the poorly selling, critically adored passion pieces that generate enormous good will that draw players in for other games from the same group.

These sort of games were what Sony once championed as being the reason to get a playstation and therefore enter the ecosystem. If the deal was the same as for death stranding the pc version would've likely been much later so physnt was still contributing to that. And if it was an Alan wake 2 style award winning game that was paid for by Sony and started as a console exclusive? That's good pr which they not only need but is also a form of currency that tracks into people on the ecosystem and spending from generation to generation

Over budget or not, I’m sorry but Sony executives are just making themselves look both very unqualified and very incapable of running their business.

This is especially true when you compare them to their very good predecessors.

Yes they are posting good financials for now but for how long? The fallout of these decisions won’t show up in their figures straight away, there’s a delay. We all have our ps5’s so continue to use them and spend on them. However by the time ps6 rolls around I can imagine this situation being quite different.

Physint? More like Isn't (unless you're Xbox)

@AdamNovice "Death Stranding, Saros and Astro Bot are recent examples of games that didn't do as well as they should have done."

Agreed. DS2, Astrobot and Saros COMBINED haven't sold more than 7 Million copies. E33 has sold more than those games. You would think a game as celebrated as Astrobot and a Kojima joint would sell twice that.

“They already wasted money before, why not keep doing it” isn’t a very compelling argument.

If true, I get why they did it.

Good news for Xbox that Sony kindly covered huge portion of game's budget. It will now be easier to make it exclusive lol...

@PuppetMaster

1. That is 19 million PLAYERS. Not copies. Big difference. The first game was on Game Pass twice. Also, there was little insignificant event that kept people from going outside called the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. Stellar Blade was never OWNED by Sony. Only published. And Helldivers 2 is a live service game so it needed to go to more than two player bases to survive. I also recall that the Lego Horizion game came out on Switch because the developer DEMANDED it had to at least be on the Switch because Lego games are stupid popular on that thing.
3. Nothing against those devs but they don't exactly have the same pull like Kojima, regardless of the sales. His games are always about quality over quantity.
As for Fairgames and Intergalactic? Yeah, Sony will NEVER be caught dead cancelling a game from Naughty Dog, again, especially a single player game. And Fairgames is probably too far along that it has no choice but to finish

Honestly I can understand Sonys decision here. With all the love for Kojima and the critically acclaimed anime f the studio, not every project is worth the investment.
Xbox did a nice move here but as always with Xbox, this can also change within months.

Okay I want to be a fair as possible,

The gamer side of me: how about you stop with GaaS ***** you’ve been pushing?

The rational side: okay I can understand some of this. I don’t like it, but I can understand. Game was over budget and death stranding didn’t sell enough to help with the matter. Do I think this is a good decision long time? No idea my only hope is that this didn’t damage any future relationships with Kojima.
From the statement both put out, it doesn’t seem like it. If PlayStation is try to focus on in-house projects then second so they can clean their house.then I can be a little hopeful for the future.

As of right now, this decision really upset me and I chose to cancel my Wolverine preorder bc of it. Hopefully they can sort their ***** out.

Ok fair, I get it. They probably don't want another Stellar Blade situation.

Seems like a reasonable business decision on one hand. On the other DS2 was an absolutely awesome title (though that last battle was far too silly and exhausting)

Funny how Xbox has a bank account for Kojima, but not for any of the studios they've closed ain't it?

@Dodoo Yeah. Hermen and Nishino are a huge far cry compare to Kaz, Shawn, Andrew, and Shu.

@Dalamar Pretty sure Sony 1st party studios are also scanning Hollywood celebs faces. Intergalactic, Until Dawn 2, GoW Laufey, Wolverine all used Hollywood celebs and their budget combine would heavily outnumbers Kojima Physint.

@PuppetMaster could be a textbook example of "we can, others can't".

If Xbox picked it up, you know it’s the wrong decision for Sony to keep it, lol. Everyone here talked for months about how bad Xbox is run, all their bad decisions, their failed lineup of games, but now because a bunch of Kojima glazers are upset his project is dropped from Sony all of a sudden Xbox made a smart move, lol. Yeah, if Sony dropped him, it means his project was over priced and under preforming most likely. Between Concord, Bungie, and Wolverine looking to seriously underperform, and Naughty Dog literally nowhere in sight, I think the bills are maxed out.

@AdamNovice And have you EVER questioned one single decision from Sony? Just one? Like why making Concord (and a dozen games like it) in the first place?

I remember perfectly well all your comments defending the live-service initiative, insisting time and time again that none of that would withdraw resources from single-player games and well, the obvious thing happened.

And even with all those catastrophic failures like Concord Sony still says they are having their best fiscal year ever in history so why being this much risk adverse? Is Kojima such an unproven dev that they were not even willing to negotiate?

If it was a first party game it would've been another Sony blunder as Kojima doesn't bring money but he brings brand recognition.

Not being an exclusive? Cut your losses, take some flack and move on.

They saw the letters phsyi in that sequence and ran a mile lol

I see so many comments about Sony having spent so much on Concord and Marathon, so why cant they do the same Physint?
A game that has missed deadlines and is already over budget? I thought people wanted Sony to learn from its mistakes 😭

Heck, the game is going to be financed by another publisher, and it’ll probably still release for Playstation. Might be the sanest decision they’ve made in a while

This is a massive W......

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...for Microsoft now! What happened to Sony really? PS5 is my main console, but man, L after L after Ls! Good thing I also have Switch 2.

Why did Sony even compete with Microsoft to acquire studios back then, only for it to end up being for nothing since Xbox is turning into a third-party publisher? Because of that, talented studios like Bluepoint and Japan Studio—two of my favorite Sony studios—ended up closing down.