Sony Axed Kojima's PHYSINT Out of Nowhere, Journalist Says

Hideo Kojima didn't see it coming. Not even a little.

That's according to journalist Gene Park, who says Sony's decision to cancel PHYSINT — the spy-themed game Kojima Productions was cooking up — blindsided the legendary developer completely.

Park made the comments during an appearance on the Moore's Law is Dead channel. He's clearly close to the situation, too. He described Kojima not just as someone he admires, but as a friend — and revealed the two met up in New York just before Sony made its call earlier this year.

So when he was asked whether Kojima expected the cancellation, Park didn't hesitate: "Absolutely not. It was a complete surprise."

But here's where it gets interesting. Park doesn't pin the blame on Kojima at all. Instead, he points the finger squarely at PlayStation's own project management. In his view, the cancellation wasn't a Kojima problem — it was a Sony planning problem.

He brought up Sony's struggles after acquiring Bungie, as well as the mess around Concord, as examples of where things have gone sideways internally. According to Park, those missteps left the company unable to keep funding long-term projects like PHYSINT.

His argument is pretty simple: if Sony never properly planned or evaluated PHYSINT's development in the first place, you can't lay that at Kojima's feet. Park even noted that Kojima's team kept pushing the project forward through the pandemic — hardly the behavior of a studio that dropped the ball.

As for why PHYSINT was actually cancelled? Neither Sony nor Kojima Productions has said a word publicly. Earlier reports suggest Sony is shifting its strategy, putting more resources into internal studios and lower-risk projects.

So for now, we're left with a lot of questions and no official answers. Was it a strategy shift? A budget issue? Something else entirely? Your guess is as good as ours.

What do you think — did Sony make the right call, or did they just let one of gaming's boldest creators walk? Drop your take in the comments.