Announced for a 2024 launch, Hideo Kojima’s PHYSINT lost Playstation support this week and will now be funded by the Xbox team. Currently, it’s unclear on which platforms the game will be released and when. According to media reports, one of the reasons why Sony abandoned the game was regular delays in project deadlines and ballooning budgets.
“Forbis” also pointed out that Kojima Productions’ game engine may have problems with these changes. The project was created on the basis of Decima, a solution whose rights belong to Sony. on material Forbes It doesn’t directly say that Playstation has revoked rights to use the engine, but it does highlight the risk:
It’s also worth noting that since Kojima is no longer working with Sony, he may not be able to use Sony’s exclusive Decima engine, which raises further questions about the future of the project.
The same Forbes article notes that Sony is an important partner for the game in terms of overall technology:
The game is an ambitious project that blends film and gaming, and Kojima has previously sought help from Sony Pictures and Sony’s Columbia Pictures to bring the idea to fruition. Now that won’t happen either.
Decima is a game engine developed by Guerrilla Games, a subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment. Meanwhile, Decima itself is Sony’s in-house technology and is now developed by a separate team in partnership with Guerrilla.
The engine was originally created for Killzone: Shadow Fall on the Playstation 4. It was later significantly expanded for the large open worlds of Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West. Engine projects include:
- Killzone: Shadow Fall (2013)
- Until Dawn(2015)
- Until Dawn: Blood Run (2016)
- RIGS: Mechanized Combat League (2016)
- Horizon Zero Dawn(2017)
- Death Stranding(2019)
- Horizon Forbidden West (2022)
- Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (2025)
Of this list, only Death Stranding was released on Xbox, and Digital Foundry praised Kojima Studio’s engine for optimizing it for Xbox.