Hideo Kojima’s Kojima Productions has issued a rare statement hitting back at speculation around why PlayStation cancelled work on espionage game .

Earlier this month it was announced that PlayStation had cancelled work on , a new action-espionage game from and mastermind Hideo Kojima. The project was first announced back in 2024 and was due to launch in 2030.

No reason was given for the decision though a video from games journalist Jason Schreier claimed PlayStation backed out of the project after wasn’t as commercially successful as the company had hoped, and that Kojima was already going over budget on and had missed several deadlines. 

Responding to the speculation, Kojima Productions said: “Normally, we would not comment on unsubstantiated speculation on the internet, but these aspersions around our relationship with PlayStation, the commercial performance of the franchise, and the broader production planning and investment for , have reached beyond the studio and have touched our fans, our creative partners, and colleagues we have worked alongside with for three decades. None of the claims written came from any official or on-the-record source and as such we encourage you to take them with a dose of scepticism.”

“I saw the statement from Kojima Productions [and] it doesn’t dispute any of our reporting so I don’t have much to add there,” Schreier responded on Bluesky.

You may have seen a recent article that mentions KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS, speculating on the reasons for the change in publishing partners for PHYSINT.

Normally, we would not comment on unsubstantiated speculation on the internet, but these aspersions around our relationship with… pic.twitter.com/UUjSbqziAF

— KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS (Eng) (@KojiPro2015_EN) September 20, 2026

In an interview with IGN, Kojima said he was “shocked” at PlayStation’s decision to pull funding for and was worried about the future of Kojima Productions. “ I don’t have any bad feelings against them [though] because I know that it’s a tough time in the game industry.”

He went on to reveal that he’s still working on “the world, the game system, scenario, the visuals, the design and [actor] modeling,” for and still doesn’t know what game engine he’ll use to create the title, which is now being funded by Xbox.

Before , Kojima Productions will release the anthology horror game . “It’s a single-player game, and I wanted to make it as scary as possible,” Kojima said recently. “I wanted to go beyond the limit of the ‘scariness’ that other games had reached.”