by
William D’Angelo
, posted on 11 September 2026 / 3,244 Views
PlayStation ended its deal with Kojima Productions’ action espionage game, Physint, in June and it was announced this week that Xbox had signed a new deal to publish the game.
Bloomberg is now reporting the reason PlayStation ended the deal with Hideo Kojima’s studio was due to budget concerns, as well as the potential profitability and exclusivity. This comes from people familiar with the project.
One of the major factors was due to the commercial performance of the two Death Stranding games as both failed to meet PlayStation’s revenue expectations, according to the sources.
Physint has also reportedly missed deadlines and was on track to be over budget and was years away from release. PlayStation was unwilling to invest hundreds of million of dollars more in another game that wouldn’t remain a permanent exclusive to PlayStation consoles.
The two Death Stranding games were timed PlayStation exclusives with the original coming to PC less than a year after the PlayStation 4 release and even to the Xbox Series X|S in November 2024. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach would release for the PlayStation 5 in June 2025 and for PC in March 2026.
With Xbox publishing Physint, the game will launch on Xbox consoles and PC day one, said the people. This isn’t a surprise as Xbox releases all of its first-party games day one on PC.
“Betting on Kojima-san is an easy call,” said an Xbox spokesperson. “We believe in his team’s ability to build AAA games with groundbreaking, new IP and we believe in OD, Physint, and our growing partnership.”
A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
