- Kojima: Your Mother Won’t Be Able to Tell the Difference Between PHYSINT and a Movie Push Square
- Hideo Kojima Says if Your Mother Walks in on You Playing His New Action-Espionage Game, ‘She’ll Think You’re Watching a Movie’ IGN
- Kojima’s Physint was inspired by Metal Gear fans ‘desires’ Polygon
- Hideo Kojima’s return to action espionage was prompted by a health scare in 2020 and 8 years of fans begging for another Metal Gear Gamesradar
- Hideo Kojima Says Life-Threatening Illness Solidified Decision To Create Physint MMORPG.com
Tag Archives: Kojima
Kojima says he decided to make Physint for Metal Gear fans after illness in 2020 – Rock Paper Shotgun
- Kojima says he decided to make Physint for Metal Gear fans after illness in 2020 Rock Paper Shotgun
- Hideo Kojima Says if Your Mother Walks in on You Playing His New Action-Espionage Game, ‘She’ll Think You’re Watching a Movie’ IGN
- Kojima’s Physint was inspired by Metal Gear fans ‘desires’ Polygon
- Hideo Kojima Revealed What Inspired His New Action-Espionage Game Insider Gaming
- Hideo Kojima’s return to action espionage was prompted by a health scare in 2020 and 8 years of fans begging for another Metal Gear Gamesradar
Hideo Kojima says he decided to make Physint for fans after sickness made him reconsider his priorities – Eurogamer.net
- Hideo Kojima says he decided to make Physint for fans after sickness made him reconsider his priorities Eurogamer.net
- Hideo Kojima Says if Your Mother Walks in on You Playing His New Action-Espionage Game, ‘She’ll Think You’re Watching a Movie’ IGN
- Kojima’s Physint was inspired by Metal Gear fans ‘desires’ Polygon
- Hideo Kojima minces no words on his new action espionage game: “If your mother walks in and sees you playing this game, she’ll think you’re watching a movie” Gamesradar
- Death Stranding 2: Release Date, Platforms, Gameplay, And Cast Kotaku Australia
Xbox Game Studios team visits Kojima Productions ‘to kick-off an exciting journey’ | VGC – Video Games Chronicle
- Xbox Game Studios team visits Kojima Productions ‘to kick-off an exciting journey’ | VGC Video Games Chronicle
- Xbox celebrates GDC by inviting game developers to discover innovative tools, fresh strategies, and new ways to succeed Microsoft
- Xbox Team Visits Kojima Productions To Kick Off ‘Exciting Journey Ahead’ Pure Xbox
- Aaron Greenberg visits Kojima Productions with Xbox Game Studios to discuss cloud engineering in cool hoodies Windows Central
- Xbox Game Studios Publishing Team Visits Kojima Productions to ‘Kick-Off an Exciting Journey’ – News VGChartz
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Hideo Kojima says he rejects ‘ridiculous’ offers for his studio daily
Hideo Kojima wants folks to know he is a resolutely independent video games developer. That is, not only does his studio have “no affiliations with anyone,” but also “every day” the Death Stranding auteur is refusing buyout offers from other companies.
“Some of those offers are ridiculously high prices,” Kojima said in his latest edition of Brain Structure, a podcast available through Spotify. (For the record, Kojima speaks in Japanese, with an English overdub). “But it’s not that I want money. I want to make what I want to make. That’s why I created this studio.”
Kojima hosts the podcast, and his guest this week was his good friend Geoff Keighley, himself the host of The Game Awards — so, Kojima ostensibly leading the discussion. (Disclosure: Kojima is a member of The Game Awards’ advisory board.)
However, Keighley quickly took on the role of interviewer, asking Kojima about recent developments in the games industry. “There are so many rumors about games, on social media especially, and I thought maybe we would talk about some of the rumors that are out there, and some of the truth that are behind those rumors,” Keighley said.
The two then engaged in a lengthy discussion of rumor culture, entertainment products, and social media. After mentioning this summer’s announcement that Kojima was working on a game for Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios, Keighley brought up Kojima’s already-close working relationship with PlayStation and Sony Interactive Entertainment (Death Stranding was, and still is, a PlayStation console exclusive), and whether he had made commitments to one console maker or the other over the years.
“I think a lot of people have a misunderstanding about Kojima Productions,” he said. “I created this company in 2015 after leaving Konami. It was 100% out of my pocket. No funding from anyone whatsoever. So, we’re independent.”
Kojima acknowledged that his studio’s actual, physical proximity to both Sony’s worldwide headquarters (in Shibuya, Tokyo), as well as Sony Interactive Entertainment’s HQ, means “people tend to think we are part of Sony.” But as this summer’s announcement regarding Microsoft indicates, “we are indies. We have no affiliations whatsoever, and we are not backed by anyone. […] And every day, I am approached by offers all over the world to buy our studio.
“Some of those offers are ridiculously high prices, but it’s not that I want the money,” Kojima said. “I want to make what I want to make. That’s why I created this studio.”
In other words, for those expecting Kojima Productions (and mascot Ludens) to be the latest big-name acquisition in a year shot through with them, don’t hold your breath. “As long as I’m alive, I don’t think I will ever accept those offers,” Kojima said.
One assumes Kojima’s posture comes from how his tenure ended with Konami in 2015, when the publisher jettisoned him and his ideas in favor of making pachinko machines and burning Pro Evolution Soccer to the ground.
But Kojima also speaks as an artist (of 35 years and counting, in this medium) who understands creative capital and how much he has earned.
Hideo Kojima Cryptically Hints at Impending Reveal
Last month, at the Tokyo Game Show, industry icon Hideo Kojima posted a silhouette of what snoops discovered to be Elle Fanning. The image was overlaid with the phrase: “Who am I?” This was lettermarked with a bridge icon, leading some to believe the image could be a teaser for the rumoured Death Stranding 2, which is apparently codenamed Ocean.
Writing on Twitter today, the auteur has followed up his previous comments with another equally cryptic clue: “The answer to ‘WHO’ at TGS will be in the next ‘WHERE’.” Obviously, this riddle reads like little more than nonsense right now, but we’re assuming it means more information will be announced at the next major industry event, like The Game Awards in December.
Of course, Kojima Productions has multiple projects in the works, so there’s no guarantee this is even related to any upcoming PlayStation games – he’s also collaborating with Xbox, as announced at E3, for example. We’re not a big fan of the industry’s cloak-and-daggers approach to teasing upcoming projects, but we appreciate this is Kojima’s modus operandi – let’s just hope this doesn’t drag on, eh?
Stadia canceled exclusive Death Stranding follow-up from Kojima
Before Google closed down the division in 2021, Stadia Games and Entertainment turned down the opportunity to have an exclusive follow-up to Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding.
When Stadia was first announced in 2019, Google did so with aplomb, showcasing a grand vision for what cloud streaming technology could enable, with ideas like Stream Connect to instantly view your teammates’ gameplay. Rather than relying on third-party companies to see the merits of these ideas, Google formed Stadia Games & Entertainment — headed up by industry veteran Jade Raymond — to create experiences that could only be possible on Stadia.
A little over a year into Stadia’s existence, however, with the service reportedly missing user targets by “hundreds of thousands,” Google began winding down the Stadia Games and Entertainment division. Before that shutdown, Google was working with quite a few well known developers in the gaming industry to craft Stadia exclusive titles.
Some companies like Harmonix had been publicly confirmed to be working on Stadia titles while names like Yu Suzuki and Hideo Kojima were reported after the fact. These efforts were presumed to result in second-party titles published by Stadia Games & Entertainment, as opposed to the in-house games being developed by Shannon Studstill’s team and Google’s Star Labs.
A source has told 9to5Google that the game Kojima was working on was meant to be a Stadia-exclusive follow-up to Death Stranding, a game which initially launched as a PlayStation exclusive in 2019. Where the original Death Stranding was an asynchronous multiplayer game — where actions taken in your world can have an effect on other players, such as building signs to help others find their way — the proposed game would be strictly a single-player experience.
In fact, our source says it was that single-player nature of the game that led Google to cancel Stadia’s collaboration with Kojima, with the company believing there was no longer a market for solo experiences. Reportedly, the game had gotten initial approval from Google and had begun the early stages of development. However, shortly after the first mockups were shown in mid 2020, Google scrapped the project entirely.
Previous reporting on Kojima Productions’ intended Stadia efforts claimed it would be an “episodic horror game,” and that Kojima himself excited to work with the potential of the cloud. Ultimately, it was said to be Stadia’s General Manager, Phil Harrison, who made the final call to cancel the Death Stranding follow-up.
Since that cancelation, with its more recent PC re-releases, Death Stranding has grown to be a well-regarded game with a full sequel now said to be in the works. Beyond that, the enduring popularity of games like God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and Control shows that single-player games continue to be a core market, especially for platform exclusives.
Even with the benefit of hindsight, it’s impossible to know whether an exclusive game from Hideo Kojima would have made the difference for Stadia’s future as a platform. According to Kojima’s own timeline, the original Death Stranding entered development in 2015 and didn’t launch until 2019. If the follow-up required a similar timescale, it wouldn’t have even seen release before Google pulled the plug on Stadia.
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Hideo Kojima Wanted A Two-Week Metal Gear Solid Boss Battle
Hideo Kojima’s new podcast isn’t for everyone, so thankfully it’s not the only place we can turn to for development stories from the games he’s worked on. Like this one about a very tedious idea for Metal Gear Solid 3.
The latest episode of Did You Know Gaming—narrated by none other than Snake’s original voice actor David Hayter—is all about content that has been cut from the series, drawing upon information released in old interviews (big love to the quotes from Hyper) and books. There’s stuff on weapons that were too zany, story elements that never made it and game sequences that were cut then turned into cutscenes.
The funniest and most interesting part of the video, though, is the part about a boss battle that was planned for Metal Gear Solid 3, made it into testing then ended up so bad the developers started booing Kojima over it. Here’s the story, via Kotaku AU:
The story goes that, during production on Metal Gear Solid 3, Kojima had become infatuated with the works of novelist Stephen Hunter, whose books The Master Sniper and Point of Impact, were about snipers embedded in the mountains, gradually trying to pick one another off. Kojima’s idea was that Snake’s boss fight with The End would be as close to a real-life sniper fight as humanly possible, and would be played out over two real-time weeks. The player would need to use their surroundings to remain hidden and silent, look for clues in a huge area to identify where The End was hiding and, once he was located, set up the perfect shot. Again, this would play out over two actual weeks.
The crazy thing is that this boss fight actually made it to a prototype stage. It was, at one point, a real part of a playable build. However, when it came time to test the fight, no one who played through it was able to find a trace of the old man. Numerous players spent hours looking for The End and turned up nothing, effectively impeding their progress through the game. The team found the fight so infuriatingly dull that they began booing Kojima, convincing him to give up on the idea entirely.
I want to believe that this is the total experience of working with Kojima, compressed into a single anecdote. You can watch the full video below; maybe you know some of this already, or maybe, like me, you knew almost none of it and it’s 42 minutes of really interesting stuff!
Kojima Reassures Sony Fans He’s Still Working With PlayStation
Do you hear that? Out in the distance, you can hear thousands of angry fanboys continuing to fight online in the endlessly sad console war. The latest battle involves Metal Gear and Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima and his independent studio deciding to do business with Microsoft and work on an Xbox-exclusive game. This, to some, is high treason. And seemingly in response to those angry fans (as well as to genuinely curious onlookers), Kojima Productions has issued a statement reassuring people that it will continue to work with Sony and PlayStation in the future.
Over the weekend, Microsoft held a big Xbox and Bethesda video game showcase. During the event—which featured a lot of trailers, new gameplay of Starfield, announcements, and more— Kojima appeared for a very brief segment. Basically, the famous video game designer showed up to say “Hey, I’m making a game with Xbox using cloud tech…uh…I’ll have more to say later!”
Pretty harmless stuff. And sure, it’s a bit silly that Kojima simply making a game has become a monumentally important bit of news, but hey, Death Stranding and MGS3 were really good. So, like, I get it, I guess. But know who doesn’t, in fact, “get it” and is angry about all this? Insane PlayStation fanboys. I’m not talking about the people who prefer playing PS5 over Xbox Series X or who like God of War more than Halo. I’m talking about the deranged console fans who have more in common with right-wing nutjobs or crazed cultists than with most gamers.
And these particular folks are mad.
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Some of them have already started at least one petition begging Kojima to cancel his Xbox game, lamenting that some people can’t afford an Xbox or don’t like cloud gaming. (This ignores that the game will likely appear on PC and could even be a streaming-only thing playable on phones and laptops…) You can quickly also find numerous angry posts and tweets below any news about Kojima’s Xbox deal if you start digging around online.
So, seemingly in response to all this and to people questioning what this might imply about Kojima relationship with PlayStation, the company issued a statement on Twitter confirming what you probably already guessed: As an independent studio, it’s able to work with multiple partners and companies at the same time.
After the announcement of our partnership with Microsoft using the cloud technology, many people have asked us about our collaboration with SIE [Sony Interactive Entertainment]. Please be assured that we continue to have a very good partnership with PlayStation as well.
Kotaku has also reached out to Kojima Productions about the statement, but this type of setup, where a company works with other companies at the same time on multiple projects, is very common, and it’s weird so many angry fans are acting as if Kojima has personally betrayed them.
But when you base your entire personality and life around specific plastic boxes and brands, you tend to suffer from some brain worms.
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Kojima Productions Makes Clear It Still Has ‘Very Good Partnership’ With PlayStation After Xbox Announcement
Kojima Productions has made clear it still has a good relationship with PlayStation, despite announcing an Xbox exclusive game.
Hideo Kojima revealed his studio would be making “a completely new game that no one has ever experienced or seen before” at the Xbox Bethesda Game Showcase on June 12, causing some to question the studio’s ties to PlayStation.
“After the announcement of our partnership with Microsoft using the cloud technology, many people have asked us about our collaboration with [Sony Interactive Entertainment],” the Kojima Productions Twitter page posted (below). “Please be rest assured that we continue to have a very good partnership with PlayStation as well.”
After the announcement of our partnership with Microsoft using the cloud technology, many people have asked us about our collaboration with SIE. Please be assured that we continue to have a very good partnership with PlayStation® as well.#KojimaProductions https://t.co/mVOELwDuk9
— KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS (Eng) (@KojiPro2015_EN) June 13, 2022
The developer has previously been synonymous with Sony’s side due to its only franchise, Death Stranding, being a PlayStation exclusive – even featuring on the PlayStation Studios website. Kojima himself has long been associated with PlayStation, well before the creation of his own studio.
The Xbox announcement led to an outcry among some fans of Kojima, who felt the legendary developer shouldn’t move away from his ties to PlayStation. Some have even set up petitions to ask for Kojima Productions not to work on an Xbox game.
But Kojima Productions is an independent studio and, as it said in another tweet, “will explore various possibilities with games, movies, and music through platforms that evolve with time and technology.” Kojima himself said of the announcement that he’s incorporating Microsoft’s “cutting edge technology”, particularly cloud streaming, and a “change in the industry’s trends” into this new project.
While the project is still in its early stages, it’s something the famed developer – most famous for creating the Metal Gear Solid franchise – has always wanted to make. “I’ve waited very long for the day when I could finally start to create it,” he said.
That’s not to say Death Stranding is finished, of course, as just recently its lead actor, The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus, leaked that a sequel to the 2019 stealth-action game is in development. In our 6/10 review of the first game, IGN said: “Death Stranding delivers a fascinating world of supernatural sci-fi, but its gameplay struggles to support its weight.”
Another supposed Kojima game, a horror title called Overdose, appeared to have leaked earlier this week, but has yet to officially appear publicly.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.