Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is now available on early access on the PlayStation 5, ahead of its official launch date of June 26, 2025, exclusively on the console. However, early players have found a completely unexpected – and perhaps unintended – Easter egg in the credits.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Kojima Productions has added Nintendo, of all companies, to this game that was published and funded by Sony Interactive Entertainment. However, everything starts to make more sense when you read the fine print.
Because they didn’t credit Nintendo Co. Ltd, or Nintendo of America. Nintendo Pictures Co. Ltd., a CG animation studio, is what comes up in Death Stranding 2: On The Beach’s credits. And Nintendo Pictures was originally known as Dynamo Pictures, but was acquired by Nintendo all the way back in 2022.
Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa told investors last year that Nintendo Pictures “is working on various initiatives in the visual content business, and not just feature-length films.” However, the company would have obviously still had outstanding work commitments, as well as some unreleased productions, by the time that they were acquired by Nintendo.
So what probably happened here is that when the company was still known as Dynamo Pictures, they were hired to do CG work on Death Stranding 2: On The Beach. Notably, there’s a shaky timetable to this game’s development, as Hideo Kojima explained he had written a draft for the sequel during the pandemic’s quarantine and lockdown phase, but he also was struck ill and chose to rewrite the story during this period.
Kojima Productions officially confirmed Death Stranding 2: On The Beach in The Game Awards 2022, although there were earlier teases of the game with Elle Fanning and from Norman Reedus. So there’s a huge possibility that Nintendo Pictures was already owned by Nintendo in the time that they made some, if not all of the CG animation for this Sony game.
As Video Games Chronicle noted, Dynamo Pictures’ gameography includes Final Fantasy XIII-2, Nier Replicant, Monster Hunter World, and Persona 5 (possibly Persona 5 Royal). All these games got released on or before 2022, so the situation with Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is genuinely different.
But some fanboys may think this is some kind of slight on one company over another, when that isn’t the case at all. If you read between the lines, Nintendo may have mandated Nintendo Pictures to drop their commitment to Kojima Productions, but they chose not to. In the same way that Microsoft honored Bethesda’s contract of one year exclusivity for Deathloop, Nintendo allowed their new subsidiary to keep working on a Sony project.
But then again, we should probably rethink this whole idea that Sony and Nintendo are still feuding like it’s 1994. After all, Sony’s subsidiary, Sony Pictures, is making Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda live-action movie. We shouldn’t be surprised if we see a future project that has the logos of Sony, Nintendo, Sony Pictures, and Nintendo Pictures, all together and completely normal.
