- Hideo Kojima confirmed he has no idea whether Physint will release on PS5 after Xbox took over as publisher.
- The engine situation is equally uncertain — Kojima says he hasn’t decided whether Physint will still use Sony’s Decima engine.
- Xbox picked up Physint in September 2026 after PlayStation Studios sent Kojima Productions a cancellation notice in June 2026.
- Kojima is excited by Xbox’s cutting-edge tech labs and wants to use whatever new tools he can get his hands on.
- OD: Knock, the studio’s other Xbox-funded game, is already confirmed to be running on Unreal Engine 5.
- Physint is still early in development and is estimated to be at least five to six years away from release.
Let’s be real — Physint has had one of the wildest development stories in recent gaming history. What started as a PlayStation-exclusive spiritual successor to Metal Gear Solid got dropped by Sony out of nowhere in mid-June 2026, spent three months in limbo, and then somehow landed at Xbox. Dramatic doesn’t even cover it. And now, in a brand new interview, Hideo Kojima has confirmed something that a lot of us suspected but nobody really wanted to hear out loud: even he doesn’t know if Physint is coming to PS5.
The PS5 Question Nobody Has an Answer For
In a recent interview with IGN, Kojima was asked directly about which platforms Physint will be available on now that Xbox is running the show. His answer was about as clear as a codec call with bad signal.
“I don’t know the answer to that — that would be a question for Xbox,” Kojima said. He added that he believed Xbox had a stance of wanting to deliver games to as many players as possible, regardless of platform — but he also acknowledged he genuinely doesn’t know what they’ve decided for Physint specifically.
And here’s the thing: that “Xbox plays everywhere” approach he’s referring to was true for years. But things shifted when new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma came in at the start of 2026. Xbox has been leaning back into exclusives again, recently confirming that big titles are increasingly being kept off rival platforms. At the same time, games like Forza Horizon 6 and Fable are still heading to PS5, so it’s not a blanket policy either. Physint could honestly go either way.
“I think all of that will be announced at a later time,” Kojima added. “I’m not sure yet, and I can’t really say.”
So yeah — don’t go cancelling your PlayStation subscription over this just yet. But don’t bank on a PS5 release either. It’s genuinely up in the air right now.
The Engine Question Is Just as Wide Open
Platform uncertainty is one thing, but the engine situation might actually matter more when it comes to how development plays out from here. For those who need a quick history lesson — the Decima engine, which powered both Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, is owned by Guerrilla Games. Guerrilla is a Sony first-party studio. When Kojima left Konami and set up Kojima Productions, he spent a long time hunting for the right engine before eventually landing on Decima. Guerrilla gave him access on the condition that his team kept contributing improvements back to it. The name “Decima” itself only got officially coined after the two studios started working together.
Now that Sony has walked away from publishing Physint, the obvious question is whether Kojima’s team even still has access to that engine. And when IGN put that question to him directly, his answer was surprisingly candid.
“Well, I haven’t really decided yet. I’m still experimenting,” Kojima said, when asked whether the engine situation changed after Sony dropped the project.
He went on to talk about a visit to Xbox’s facilities during the Don Mattrick era, where he was genuinely floored by how many labs and experimental tech projects they had running simultaneously. He compared walking through the place to being surrounded by a building full of Doc Browns from Back to the Future. Now that Xbox is back in his corner, he wants to dig into all of that and see what’s possible.
“After we decided to team up with Xbox, they said they will give us a lot of technological support,” Kojima said. “Anything that I can use, I want to use, and I’m looking forward to teaming up with Xbox, but I really haven’t decided about the engine.”
Could Physint End Up on Unreal Engine 5?
Here’s where things get interesting if you read between the lines a little. Kojima Productions’ other in-development title — OD: Knock, the horror collaboration being made alongside director Jordan Peele — is already confirmed to be running on Unreal Engine 5. That’s significant, because it means the studio already has an active UE5 pipeline up and running with real production work happening on it.
It would make a certain kind of practical sense for Physint to follow the same path. Building deep expertise in one engine while shipping a full game is already a massive undertaking — running two completely different engines on two completely different projects in parallel is even harder. Epic’s Unreal Engine 5 is also one of the most widely supported engines in the industry right now, and Xbox has extensive experience working alongside studios using it.
That said, Kojima has never been the guy to take the path of least resistance when it comes to tools and technology. If there’s some experimental Microsoft research project sitting in one of those labs he keeps talking about, don’t be surprised if Physint ends up using something the industry hasn’t seen before. That’s kind of his whole thing.
There’s also the question of whether Kojima could potentially negotiate continued access to Decima directly with Guerrilla Games, separate from any publishing arrangement with Sony. It’s not completely impossible — PlayStation did say publicly that their relationship with Kojima “remains strong” even after the Physint split. But engine licensing arrangements between competing platform holders get complicated fast, and it would be a genuinely unusual situation to navigate.
What the Sony Split Actually Cost Kojima Productions
Beyond the engine and platform questions, the break from Sony comes with other complications worth flagging. Physint was originally tied not just to PlayStation but to Sony Pictures — the reveal even featured a Columbia Pictures logo on set. That cinematic angle was always a core part of what Physint was supposed to be: Kojima has described the game as something that functions simultaneously as both a game and a movie. Losing the Sony Pictures connection potentially changes what that vision actually looks like in practice.
Xbox, for its part, has confirmed the partnership extends beyond games into film and television, so Kojima isn’t completely without a path forward on that front. But it’s a different situation than what was originally planned, and the full scope of what changed behind the scenes still hasn’t been publicly detailed.
The reasons Sony walked away also remain murky. Reports have pointed to Death Stranding’s sales underperforming expectations, repeated budget overruns on Kojima’s projects, and complications around securing full platform exclusivity as contributing factors. Sony received the cancellation notice in June 2026 — and Kojima only found out about it via email, which is a detail that still stings every time it comes up.
Where Physint Actually Stands Right Now
At this point, Physint is still in very early development. Kojima himself said back in May 2025 — before the Sony situation even blew up — that the game needed another five to six years of work. Add potential engine retooling and platform decisions still being sorted out, and this is realistically shaping up as a PS6-era release rather than something built for current hardware. Some fans have even speculated the project could end up skipping the current generation entirely depending on how long development runs.
The confirmed cast so far includes Don Lee, Charlee Fraser, and Minami Hamabe — already a solid lineup. And if the rumour mill is to be believed, there may be even bigger names still to come. Kojima has always treated his casts like a flex, and there’s no reason to think Physint will be any different.
For now though, the honest answer to “when and where can I play Physint” is: nobody knows. Not even Kojima. And somehow that makes it even more interesting to watch unfold. If you’re the type who follows long-in-development games that keep everyone guessing, Physint is going to be one to keep tabs on for a very long time.
We’ll update as Xbox and Kojima Productions start making things official. Until then, keep your codec open.
