PHYSINT

“I'm getting older, and I'd prefer to do it while I'm still young!”

In mid-June 2026, PlayStation Studios notified Kojima and KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS that it would cancel PHYSINT. The project was important both to Kojima and to his studio. After three months of searching for a new partner, Kojima and his team found a shared vision with XBOX and decided to work together again. Development of PHYSINT continues.

Kojima created both the new key visual for PHYSINT and its copy. The tagline is “The Next Cold War Begins.”

Kojima coined the original term “PHYSINT” himself.

“But the number one priority is my staff. We have about 200 people, and I expanded because we had Physint. […] I didn't want to do the same thing we did for P.T.”

“True story: after the meeting, the first thing I did was, I came back to my desk, and I started to write and add a little bit more to the concept for Physint.”

“But if Kojima Productions collapses, that doesn’t follow this trend at all. It’s a step backwards for indies. So I needed to stand firm and continue this project.”

“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.”

“I predicted that people might leave, but no one did.”

“So the work didn’t stop. […] I have to change the story depending on how the game experiment works.”

“They haven't contacted me ever since. But I'm not fighting with Sony. We're not in a dispute. […] So if this was the conclusion, I would've wanted to hear it a little earlier.”

“I want to do something new. But I saw so many people requesting it. And I was thinking, maybe I only have 10 years left. […] And we shook hands and that's how the partnership started.”

“These days of digital production, we could actually kind of use the same assets for a movie and a game. […] Of course, I'll release the game first probably!”

In a statement supplied to IGN after the interview, Kojima Productions urged scepticism toward unofficial explanations for Physint’s change of partner. The studio said it was healthy and profitable, that development was continuing with Xbox and that its relationship with PlayStation remained strong.

“I pitched him the game, and he agreed to do it.”

“He keeps asking me for the script. […] I have the plot ready. But he wants to know the lines and how his character speaks. […] He asks me to write it but I'm like, "Hold on!"”

“We captured how fabric wrinkles and catches light. We'll change the designs.”

“I took that photo.”

Kojima created and directed the video games Metal Gear (1987), Snatcher (1988), Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990), Policenauts (1994), Metal Gear Solid (1998), Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001), Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004), Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008), Peace Walker (2010), Metal Gear Solid V (2014–2015), P.T. (2014), Death Stranding (2019) and Death Stranding 2 (2025); he has OD and Physint in development. He has also produced or supervised other video games such as Zone of the Enders, the Boktai series, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Metal Gear Rising.