Thursday, September 10th 2026
Kojima's Physint Moves to Xbox After PlayStation Pulls the Plug on Project
Physint is an upcoming stealth action game by Kojima Productions and written by Hideo Kojima, originally slated to be published by PlayStation. It was originally announced at a 2024 PlayStation State of Play, but as of a recent announcement on the Kojima Productions site, Physint will now be published in partnership with Xbox.
As explained in a follow-up post by Hideo Kojima on X, PlayStation had decided to cancel Physint in mid-June 2026, although no reason was publicly disclosed for the cancellation. Following Sony pulling out of the project, Kojima Productions searched for a new publishing partner for three months, ultimately landing on Xbox, citing that the two companies "share a common vision for the future."
The move from PlayStation to Xbox will likely have ramifications for the game's platform availability—the obvious one being that it will at least not be a PlayStation 5 exclusive—although with a game that's already at least two years into development, day-one PC availability seems unlikely unless there are changes to the internal timelines. Curiously, mid-June is also around the time that it was revealed that PlayStation would be moving towards PS5 exclusives, so it's also possible that there was some sort of clash between the two studios about platform availability.
Kojima's full post reads as follows:
Sources:
Kojima Productions, Hideo Kojima on X
As explained in a follow-up post by Hideo Kojima on X, PlayStation had decided to cancel Physint in mid-June 2026, although no reason was publicly disclosed for the cancellation. Following Sony pulling out of the project, Kojima Productions searched for a new publishing partner for three months, ultimately landing on Xbox, citing that the two companies "share a common vision for the future."
Kojima's full post reads as follows:
As confirmed earlier through our official channels, in mid-June of this year, we unexpectedly received notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the PHYSINT project. PHYSINT is an important project both to me personally and to KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS. Determined to keep the project alive, we have spent the last three months searching tirelessly for a new partner. In the course of seeking advice and pursuing negotiations with people across many fields, we found in XBOX a partner with whom we share a common vision for the future, and we have decided to team up with them once again. Please rest assured that development of PHYSINT, our genre-defining action-espionage title, is ongoing and will continue moving forward.
12 Comments on Kojima's Physint Moves to Xbox After PlayStation Pulls the Plug on Project
Even after all their live service failures they've decided to double down on it.
I don't think anything this year coming from them has been positive.
On the plus side at least Kojima can take his IP to a different publisher as Sony doesnt own or have any rights to it which is absolutely GREAT.
Although with said said. If Xbox didnt say yes. The project would have been completely dead in the water as there are no other console based gaming platforms that compete at the same level as xbox and PS.
Its Either Microsoft, Sony or a big publisher like EA for a PC release. And no matter how much I am looking forward to the game. I would rather a project completely die then let EA get their hands on it.
Kojima's name still carries a lot of weight though. Im sure if he allowed the game to be crowd funded. Self publishing the game would probably be no problem at all.
we probably will never know the true reason until this finally ships, then we can speculate on Sony's reason(s)
Sony needs to learn from their mistakes or else I believe they're starting to lose market share.
As for Sony, they haven’t made a good decision regarding their gaming division in many years, so it’s not too surprising. MS isn’t much of a step up, though. Then again, Kojima needs SOMEONE to give him money, not like DS2 did amazingly (or at least that’s the scuttlebutt).
The only reason Sony's Playstation doesn't crash and burn is because both direct competitors (Nintendo and MS) are probably doing worse or just don't cover the target market as well. But really, PS5 was a very weak gen and it still is, very little in it that you really need to buy a Playstation for, and the way Sony turns around on their crossplay adventure (and even the execution of said crossplay / ported games to PC with the weird take on PSN accounts) is a huge show of total incompetence.
Their discless adventure is going to be the next shit show and this might be the first artifact of it. Its of a similar nature as Microsoft's 'Let's bundle KINECT and force always online' mishap; or Blizzards' 'Dont you have phones' moment.
Every time the user base presents a massive middle finger to forced online and we've gotten wiser and wiser over the years: yep those on demand assholes are ready to lock you into a payment scheme that you never wanted, and you always need to have an escape. You can bet this cancellation / move is directly attributable to always online enforcement strategies.
We can draw on one solid conclusion for now,... Sony didn't like what they saw, and worse there was probably never going to be a PC release (seeing Sony bailed on that section).
With that live service blunder of dedicating too much studios towards it and overpaying for bungie because MS spooked them, i would think they ain't looking for more games they fund to underperform and they didn't have faith in what Kojima was bringing.
What's weird to me in all this is, Kojima struck it great with one type of game and you'd think when branching on your own, you'd play it safe and first make a game in what your great at, not take a gamble as with DS.
MS probably agreed because you know they looking for games, and they'll likely release it on PC to re-coup some cost..