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Earlier this week, the PlayStation Studios website was updated so that the banner image included an picture of Sam Bridges from Death Stranding. Yesterday, Death Stranding designer and Kojima Productions founder Hideo Kojima tweeted a picture said banner.
People then got excited, thinking this wordless tweet meant that Sony had acquired Kojima Productions. It caused enough of a fuss that Kojima did a follow-up tweet saying, hey, sorry, that hasn’t happened.
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
“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, but Kojima Productions has been and will continue to be an independent studio,” said Kojima in the tweet.
Death Stranding was funded by Sony and launched as a PlayStation 4 exclusive, and more recently its Director’s Cut likewise launched as a PlayStation 5 exclusive. It’s not unreasonable for Sony to stick it in a banner to advertise the kinds of game they make – although its proximity to the PlayStation Studios logo is also a fair cause of confusion. Folks over at ResetEra spotted the change and have a comparison to the old banner, if you’re curious. I’d take Sam Porter Bridges over Concrete Genie’s wobbly motion controls any day.
The acquisition rumour mill can be triggered by a light breeze at this point, given every business seems to be hoovering up every other business of late. While Microsoft have led the charge, Sony have been at it too, buying Destiny developers Bungie earlier this year. Kojima’s tweets are also regularly over-analysed because, I dunno, he made the conspiracy-dense Metal Gear Solid games I guess.
Obviously I’m keen that Kojima Productions remain independent. Death Stranding came to PC not too long after its initial console release. Given the much greater lag between Sony’s own studios launching a new game and them bringing that game to PC, any acquisition would seem to be bad news for us.