PlayStation Canceled Kojima's PHYSINT Over a Zoom Call
Hideo Kojima says the end of PHYSINT came not in a meeting room but on a video call, and that's a hell of a way to treat the guy who saved your last console generation.
Hideo Kojima's PHYSINT didn't die in a boardroom or a press release. According to Insider Gaming, Kojima revealed in a new interview that PlayStation pulled the plug on the project over a Zoom call, the same way a company might let go of a contractor it never quite trusted.
Credit where it's due: Sony bankrolled one of gaming's strangest auteurs long enough to get PHYSINT this far, more creative rope than most publishers hand anyone chasing a spy thriller with Kojima's fingerprints on it. That's the one nice thing I've got to say here.
Because the rest of this is a mess. PlayStation, you gave Kojima Productions the budget, the platform, and presumably a release window to build toward, then decided the cleanest way to end it was a scheduled call with someone's finger on the mute button. That's not how you treat the studio that helped carry the PS4 through its best years.
Kojima has already said he still loves Sony despite the snub, as covered in Kojima Says He Still Loves Sony After Physint Snub, and loyalty that generous deserves better than a screen share.
So what does PlayStation do to make this right?
Nothing, probably.
PHYSINT is gone, Kojima's reputation walks away untouched, and PlayStation picks up a scar it didn't need while it's already explaining a shaky superhero launch elsewhere. Cutting a project is a business call. Cutting it over Zoom is a tell about how little the conversation was worth to the people making it.