Wednesday evening, September 9, PlayStation Studios posted that it had made "the difficult decision to step away" from Physint, the action-espionage game it announced with Kojima Productions in January 2024. Minutes later, Xbox published a blog post saying it would publish the game instead. Complex (@Complex) had both statements by Thursday morning.
## Kojima's version The timing wasn't Sony's to control. In his own post, Kojima said Kojima Productions "unexpectedly received notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the PHYSINT project" in mid-June, and that he spent three months looking for a partner before landing at Xbox, "with whom we share a common vision for the future." Sony's public statement calls its relationship with Kojima "strong." Kojima's statement uses the word "cancel." Read those side by side.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma: "Creators have choices about where and how they bring their ideas to life." Xbox already publishes OD, the Kojima horror project co-written by Jordan Peele. The Xbox announcement says the deal extends to film and television, casting is underway, and performance capture starts this year.
## Why it stings for Sony Kojima is Metal Gear. Metal Gear is PlayStation. Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2 were PS5 showcase titles. Losing his next original action game to the competitor, in the same month Sony confirmed it is ending physical discs for first-party titles in 2028 and Marvel's Wolverine landed its lowest in-house Metascore of the PS5 era, is a bad news cycle stacked three deep. The GTA 6 launch on November 19 will paper over a lot of that. It won't paper over Kojima on a Series X box.
## Our lens This is a creator-ownership story with a $70 price tag. Kojima owns his studio; that's the only reason he could walk across the street with the IP in hand. Every artist reading this who's been dropped by a label and told the relationship "remains strong" knows exactly what June felt like.
## Sources - Complex - Xbox Picks Up Hideo Kojima's 'Physint' Game After PlayStation Backs Away (Sept. 10, 2026): https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/backwoodsaltar/hideo-kojima-physint-xbox-playstation - Xbox Wire - Xbox and Kojima Productions Expand Partnership to Publish PHYSINT (Sept. 9, 2026): https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/09/09/xbox-and-kojima-productions-expand-partnership-to-publish-physint/
