There was a rumour flying around recently that Kojima Productions, the studio behind Death Stranding, was possibly about to be acquired by PlayStation. Speculations were inevitably inbound after it was spotted that a banner on the PS website had switched an image to show Death Stranding instead. However, it looks as though the rumours were unfounded.
Hideo Kojima himself has shot down the idea that PlayStation will be buying his outfit, taking to Twitter in the early hours of this morning. He said that it was simply a case of misunderstanding and that Kojima Productions would continue to be an “independent studio.”
I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, but KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS has been and will continue to be an independent studio. https://t.co/2M0n4ogRaa
— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) April 15, 2022
PlayStation/Sony has already acquired a number of studios recently, which includes purchasing Bungie for a whopping $3.6 billion US, or the equivalent of £2.6 billion. Given these aggressive takeovers from all sorts of gaming giants, it’s not surprising that so many were thinking that Kojima’s company would be the next in line. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
In fact, it wouldn’t make sense for PlayStation to buy Kojima Productions at this stage, given that there are yet more rumors that Kojima is working in partnership with Xbox on his next project. As Microsoft and Sony are bitter rivals in the gaming sphere, the acquisition of Kojima Productions by the latter is almost certainly unlikely.
No one really knows what the Death Stranding studio is planning next. Some may think it could be a sequel to the open world title, but nothing has been official confirmed at the time of writing. Of course, there will no doubt be those who are pining for the loss of P.T. Sadly, it’s unlikely that Kojima will be able to continue his work on the cancelled Silent Hills game.
In any case, it looks as though the Death Stranding developer is safe for now, but who knows what the future holds. We’ll just have to wait to see what Hideo Kojima comes up with next.
