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The story
Bloomberg reports that Sony has pulled out of Hideo Kojima’s new project “PHYSINT,” citing budget overruns and missed deadlines, with development now moving to Xbox. The report also states that both Death Stranding 1 and 2 fell short of the revenue targets Sony had projected. On 5ch’s hardware/industry board, speculation swirled around the contract terms and Kojima Productions’ financial standing, with the discussion even circling back to question the original narrative of “was Death Stranding really a smash hit?”
Bloomberg: PlayStation drops Hideo Kojima’s “PHYSINT” over budget concerns and missed deadlines
▪ Death Stranding 1 & 2 sales fell short of Sony’s revenue expectations
▪ PHYSINT reportedly missed its deadline and is projected to significantly exceed budget
Source: bloomberg.com / Read the original article here
What people said
Sony: "We're in the red."
Hideo Kojima: "Next time we'll really turn a profit."
Sony: "We're in the red again."
Hideo Kojima: "I'll make PHYSINT a success."
Sony: "That's enough…"
That's the real story here.
What I don't get is—
Kojima Productions makes enough profit to buy back the Death Stranding IP, right?
So what kind of contract are they even running?
Isn't the contract itself just poorly structured?
The delivery-sim game was way too experimental.
Stealth games don't sell, and without Konami's staff they probably can't even make one.
Shitsony strikes again lol. (a common insulting pun on "Sony" — クソ, "kuso," means "crap")
If it's still years away, PS5 is already done for by then.
That number includes the copies given away for free.
That's the debt Jim left behind. (likely referring to former Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan)
What's the actual timeline here?
Maybe they had an alpha build due and just didn't deliver it.
Or maybe they hadn't actually started production at all yet.
Maybe development is running behind even Sony's own estimate—they say 2030, but it's actually tracking even later than that.
Saying this only now, huh?
After everyone hyped it up as a massive hit for so long.
The fact that they're saying it now, at this exact timing,
tells you everything you need to know.
The brand was already broken from the start—they just stopped bothering to polish the veneer.
Nobody was calling Death Stranding a masterpiece anyway lol.
Kojima Denki. (a pun on "Kojima Denki," a real Japanese electronics retail chain, mocking Kojima's name)
If anything, the hardware board had way more hate threads than praise threads.
And who was even saying it was a smash hit? I never saw that take anywhere.
I did see some diehard PlayStation fanboys (referred to with the derogatory nickname "goki") dragging up numbers from some obscure overseas site and hyping up how well it supposedly sold.
Basing "everyone was hyping it as a smash hit" off just that is a bit much…
There's no way it sold that well to begin with.
Oh right, I remember now.
ALNEA, lol.
Kojima Productions, on the other hand, is profitable enough that they could buy the IP back from Sony—so I don't think this counts as a failure.
If Death Stranding was put together solidly and sold 2 million copies, that's a fine outcome.
And besides, if they were going to cut ties over Death Stranding 2 underperforming, doing it now is way too late.
Wait, did they actually buy it back? Wasn't the original contract set up so the IP would revert to Kojima Productions, and Sony backed out because they regretted that deal?
Pretty much nothing from the last three years or so looks like it's actually turned a profit.
Helldivers 2 sold well, but that's an outside studio anyway.
Liar: "We only get to make first-party games because of CoD's leftovers."
There's no way Sony would pull something that shameless…
…oh wait, yeah they would lol.
If they part ways like this, Kojima Productions probably won't put another game on PlayStation again.
Why now, of all times?
Because Kojima Productions blew through the PHYSINT deadline and didn't stick to budget.
It's probably still just barely past pre-production.
The contract itself says 2030 or later—so what deadline did they even "blow through"?
Background and key points of this discussion
PHYSINT is a joint project between Kojima Productions and Sony announced in 2022, with a release window that was pegged at “around 2030” from the start. That makes it more reasonable to read the report’s “missed deadline” not as the actual release date, but as an internal development milestone—such as submitting an alpha build. As for Death Stranding’s actual sales figures, commenters in the thread pointed out that the “20 million” number likely includes free giveaways, and it’s unclear from the report alone how the real sales figures compare to Sony’s investment recoupment line. The capital relationship between Kojima Productions and Sony dates back to a 2022 investment, so if this report is accurate, it would be an unusual case of a split from a major publisher. Opinions in the thread were divided over the contract terms and who’s really at fault—but it’s worth noting that all of it remains speculation without any primary sourcing.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “Bloomberg: “Death Stranding 1 and 2 missed targets, PHYSINT over budget”.”
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