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Kojima Productions partnered with 505 Games to publish the first Death Stranding on Windows PC (as well as Xbox Series X and mobile platforms). As , with 1.8 million of those on PlayStation 5 and the rest on Steam. The first game over five years. (It was available on Xbox Game Pass for a time, and also given away on the Epic Games Store.) Alinea Analytics pegs the combined revenue of the Death Stranding games at about $413 million against combined budgets of $250-300 million.
Sony and Kojima's relationship extends back to Metal Gear Solid's PlayStation release in 1998. Sony also quickly partnered with Kojima Productions after Kojima and his longtime publisher Konami split. As Bloomberg notes, however, "many of the PlayStation executives who had close relationships with Kojima have left the company in recent years. "
Kojima is clearly building new relationships at Xbox; Kojima Productions had already partnered with Xbox on its upcoming horror title PHYSINT. His ambition to challenge conventions reflects the kind of creativity we want to support at XBOX," new Xbox CEO .
Both Bloomberg and Alinea Analytics pointed to Sony's live-service flops — infamously headlined by Concord — as factors in its recent decision-making. Those failures have "led PlayStation to enact stricter production milestones, according to people familiar with the business," Bloomberg stated.
It's not surprising that Sony, as it tightens its purse strings, would cancel an expensive game after the studio's previous games didn't deliver the sales Sony expected. Still, it's not a good look for Sony, which continues to that will result in thousands of people losing their jobs, one has to wonder how it has the budget for a Kojima game that surely won't be cheap.