Hideo Kojima says he will stay independent, despite PlayStation Studios speculation

Hideo Kojima has shut down rumours and speculation that his studio, Kojima Productions, was about to be acquired by Sony’s PlayStation Studios. Kojima Productions will continue to be an independent studio.

Kojima even stoked the rumours himself, whether trolling or inadvertently, by tweeting the banner that had got people in a bit of a tizzy. However, he followed up a few hours later to say “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, but Kojima Projections has been and will continue to be an independent studio.”

The internet was abuzz yesterday with speculation about Kojima Productions’ future, after the PlayStation Studios webpage was updated with a new banner featuring Death Stranding. The banner in its previous iteration had only featured games created by internal first party studios, and once updated, the only exception was the newly added Death Stranding.

Here’s the banner from the last year or so:

Playstation Studios 2021 Banner

And the newly updated banner with Norman staring at you from the left:

Playstation Studios 2022 Banner

Death Stranding was, of course, published by Sony on PlayStation 4 and then with the enhanced Director’s Cut version that added to the game for PlayStation 5. However, while Sony bankrolled much of the game’s development, Kojima Productions is an independent studio and partnered with 505 Games to bring the game to PC. It’s not clear if Sony owns the Death Stranding IP and made a unique exception to secure the partnership in 2015, or if it remains with Kojima.

However, simply scrolling down the PlayStation Studios page revealed that, when highlighting “more PlayStation Studios games”, it’s not only titles produced by first party internally owned studios. Alongside Death Stranding you have Destruction AllStars, and Sackboy: A Big Adventure that (while a Sony IP) was developed by Sumo Digital. Per Insomniac in 2017, Sony considers any game it’s published to be a first party title, even if it’s created by a ‘second party’ studio.

So, that’s that then. Kojima Productions can get back to work on their rumoured Xbox exclusive.

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