“My mind went blank”: Hideo Kojima Reveals His Reaction to Sony Dropping Physint

Hideo Kojima has finally revealed what went through his mind when Sony told him it would no longer fund Physint. The decision caught him completely off guard, but his first concern wasn’t the game’s future. Apparently, as he opens up in his latest interview with IGN, it was whether Kojima Productions could even survive without the project.

Kojima says the studio had expanded to support Physint, leaving around 200 employees tied to a two-project structure alongside OD. Losing Sony’s backing meant he immediately had to consider layoffs, cash flow, and whether the studio itself could collapse.

Hideo Kojima Feared For Kojima Productions After Sony’s Decision

According to IGN, Sony’s decision came during a June Zoom call that Kojima had not expected to end this way. He had been busy working on OD and Physint, and believed the latter was safe. Instead, SIE told him it could no longer fund development.

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.

Kojima says he didn’t feel anger or sadness at first because he was immediately thinking about his studio. Kojima Productions operates independently and takes on staff based on its active projects, meaning losing one of its two major contracts could have serious consequences.

My first thought was, ‘What am I going to do with my studio?’

The situation was more serious because Kojima Productions had also borrowed money from a bank to expand after Death Stranding. Kojima says he feared that losing Physint could create problems with those loans and force him to cut the entire team working on the game.

Thankfully, that didn’t come to pass. Kojima found a new partner in Xbox, and the project has continued moving forward since then. Just days ago, Kojima officially revealed Bill Skarsgård as Physint‘s playable lead, giving us another sign of how far the project had already progressed before Sony stepped away.

Kojima Pitched Physint to Xbox As More Than Just a Game

Credits: Kojima Productions/Xbox via YouTube

Kojima didn’t simply take the existing Physint pitch to Xbox and ask it to replace Sony as a partner. After the June meeting, he started thinking about a different way to fund and build the project, one that treated Physint as a new entertainment franchise rather than just another game. In his own words:

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.’

That idea ended up matching Xbox‘s own vision. Kojima says the green team wasn’t just thinking about funding a game, but about building an IP that could expand into movies, anime, music, merchandise, and other forms of entertainment. The partnership also officially extends beyond games into film and television.

There was another reason Kojima was determined to find a way forward. He had already experienced a high-profile project disappearing when P.T., his playable teaser for the canceled Silent Hills (which he had been developing with none other than Guillermo del Toro and Norman Reedus), was removed from the PlayStation Store after Konami ended the game. Kojima clearly didn’t want Physint to meet the same fate, so he went looking for another way forward instead.

What do you think? Can the espionage title retain the vision Kojima originally had for it after the move to Xbox? Let us know in the comments below!