PlayStation Studios website sparks Kojima Productions acquisition rumours

Updated banner art on the PlayStation Studios webpage has sparked speculation that a Kojima Productions acquisition could be imminent.

As spotted by Resetera user Toumari, the updated art now has Norman Reedus’ digital avatar from Death Stranding featured in the banner artwork alongside an all-star cast of PlayStation Studios’ characters and franchises. It’s not the only change, as he replaces Concrete Genie, while there have been updates to show off the latest entries in the MLB The Show and Gran Turismo series as well.

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

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

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.

Acquiring Kojima Productions would be another blockbusting move by Sony, which has been making strategic acquisitions over the past few years to bring studios like Housemarque, Nixxes, Firesprite and even dropping a few billion to bring Bungie into the fold. Securing one of the premier auteurs in video games would be quite the coup…

But if you just scroll down the PlayStation Studios page, you’ll note 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.

Sony considers any game it’s published to be a first party title, even if it’s created by a ‘second party’ studio. Here’s Insomniac from back in 2017 to explain the sitch from when they were independent:

Think of it more as inclusionary. Ratchet is a 1st party game. Insomniac is 2nd party developer.

— Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) October 16, 2017

So basically, there could be a big Kojima Productions acquisition on the cards – this would certainly put an end to rumours that they’re working on an Xbox exclusive next – and it is a bit surprising to see Death Stranding on banner artwork that is otherwise exclusively from first party developers… but this probably means nothing.

Probably.

Source: PlayStation via Resetera

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• Source: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2022/04/14/playstation-studios-website-sparks-kojima-productions-acquisition-death-stranding-rumours/