There have been rumors that Kojima Productions is working on a project with Microsoft, and as of recently, it is reportedly still in the works.
As reported by Jeff Grubb on the latest episode of Giant Bomb’s GrubbSnax (transcribed by VGC), Hideo Kojima’s project for Xbox is progressing as planned “as of a couple of weeks ago.” He added, “This isn’t based on the information I had last year. This is more recent than that. This is still on.”
PlayStation Studios also recently updated the first-party studios banner on its website to include Sam Bridges, the protagonist of Death Stranding. This fueled speculation on whether Sony has acquired Kojima Productions, although the addition may simply be due to Sony possibly owning the Death Stranding IP. On that note, Grubb mentions, “Does this mean that PlayStation couldn’t have acquired Kojima Productions? Not necessarily.”
There are several ways to interpret this. Perhaps Kojima Productions and Microsoft already settled on a deal before PlayStation offered to buy the studio and decided to honor any pre-existing agreements, similar to how Microsoft honored Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo’s timed exclusivity periods on PlayStation 5 before acquiring Bethesda.
Alternatively, Death Stranding’s inclusion could just represent Sony’s XDEV branch, which focuses on third-party exclusives for PlayStation. It’s unclear if PlayStation owns the IP as 505 Games publishes the PC versions of Death Stranding while PlayStation’s definitive first-party PC ports like Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War are published by Sony themselves.
We’ll report back as we learn more.
Source: Gamespot
