Sony's split from Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions was primarily driven by budget concerns, according to a Bloomberg report, after the studio asked Kojima to cancel his in-development title PHYSINT, a spiritual successor to Metal Gear Solid. Kojima has since taken the project to Xbox rather than let it be shelved. The move matters because it reflects a broader tightening of Sony's production budgets amid a string of costly failures, even as the company continues pouring resources into live-service games that have repeatedly lost money.

The report suggests Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2 underperformed financially for Sony, partly because significant PC sales generated smaller margins for the publisher, and partly because Kojima's lengthy development cycles (seven years between the two Death Stranding games) clashed with Sony's stricter production timelines. Meanwhile, Sony's live-service ventures have proven far costlier: Concord reportedly cost over $200 million, and Bluepoint Studios was closed after pivoting to a live-service project instead of its established remake work. Sony has also stopped releasing single-player games on PC, meaning it earns nothing from Kojima's self-published PC titles, further squeezing the profitability of the partnership.