A new report claims that Hideo Kojima might potentially publish his next game with Microsoft, or at the very least is in talks about a potential partnership. This came out because gamers assumed that a just-revealed game was secretly a Kojima project for the PS5 — but it isn’t.
The report comes from VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb, who writes that Kojima is “in talks with Microsoft about publishing his next game.” According to Grubb, Microsoft is attempting to “leverage Japanese talent.” Apparently, a livestream from earlier this year, in which Xbox head Phil Spencer displayed a statue of Ludens, the Kojima Productions mascot, next to an Xbox logo was meant to be a sly hint of things to come.
Part of the reason this came to light is that an upcoming PS5 game, a horror title called Abandoned, was suspected by gamers of being a stealth Hideo Kojima production. In a nutshell, since there wasn’t much info online about that game’s developers, Blue Box Game Studios, and their web presence was effectively dead, gamers suspected something. And it’s not a bad assumption — Kojima used a nonexistent studio called 7780s Studio to hide his involvement in the release of P.T. However, Blue Box later released a statement saying, “We have no association with Hideo Kojima” and it was just a small studio with no other titles to its name excited to reveal its first big project.
Here’s hoping Grubbs’ reveal hasn’t soured relations between Kojima and Microsoft. Considering the latter has been on a tear, scooping up partnerships in the name of bolstering Xbox Game Pass, it would be quite a coup to get Kojima on their side for his next major game release. And let’s hope all this attention is a net positive for Blue Box because Abandoned actually looks quite interesting.
Source: VentureBeat