r/videogames • u/TheDuckClock • Sep 10 '26

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This is just wild. PlayStation wanted to end their partnership with Hideo Kojima. So Xbox was like: "Your loss."

This year is really starting to feel like an inverse of 2014 when Xbox ruined their public image with some insane Always Online DRM requirements and PlayStation capitalized on that.

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176

u/Fat_Alphonse Sep 10 '26

The project was getting expensive and Death Stranding 2 underperformed so Sony backed out before this sinking anymore money they wouldn't get back. At least that's my guess

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u/Burstrampage Sep 10 '26

To be more specific, DS2 “underperformed” in the context of not hitting the sales targets Sony wanted. I have no doubt in my mind death stranding 2 made a profit, maybe even one considered good by many of us, just not in sonys eyes because they are stupid

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u/EvocativeReach Sep 10 '26

I mean did you see Ds2? Hollywood cast, expensive motion capture, hollywood level cutscenes.

I cant be convinced 2 million sales is anywhere near paying for that. I also dont think they would bin Kojima as long as his financials were at least very slightly green. He was likely deep in the red with them.

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u/cochese25 Sep 10 '26

Insofar as I'm aware, Sony hasn't really published the sales figures for the game, but best data shows that DS2 surpassed 2 million sales on the back of the PC port's 425,000 sale in its first week.
And that was back in March. It's had over 5 months since then to sell and insofar as I can tell, nobody has put out any numbers of how many it's sold. The only thing I could find was that the PC port's release had a positive effect on the sales of the PS5 version, increasing them week over week.

You got an up to day number on that?
Also, those same reports that tout 2 million in sales back then, also were saying the game reached parity with production costs and such. So you don't need to be convinced if that's what the facts are. Unless you're just going to cherry pick which numbers you want to believe from the people putting the numbers out.

That has nothing to do with Sony's decision, mind you. It could be they weren't satisfied with the sales or it could be that they've been burned over and over by big studio games and wanted to cut off before they ended up with another Marathon situation.

I don't really care either way. I didn't play either game, not really a fan of the MGS series and don't hold Kojima to any particularly high regard. But I don't particularly like numbers flying around that lack substantial backing for them that are also months out of date

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u/RandomCatgif Sep 10 '26

You guys seriously overvalue the costs of motion capture. It is the CHEAP option, not animating everything by hand to the same quality

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u/SloppityMcFloppity Sep 10 '26

Yeah, but kojima was out here using A Listers for motion capture.

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u/RandomCatgif Sep 10 '26

okey but then it is not the mo cap that is expensive but the actors and that is why I corrected them, they said the mo cap is expensive when in reality mocap is the easiest, cheapest and highest quality combo possible

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u/Burstrampage Sep 10 '26

I won’t pretend like I know how much all of that costs individually, but I think they were in the green somewhat. Typically being casted in a video game does net nearly the same amount of money compared to tv shows and movies.

I think motion capture, the salaries of everyone that was on the project, and marketing would be the killer. I do fully believe Sony would trash him even if he is slightly in the green though.

The unfortunate part of all this is Sony realistically gets to have their cake and eat it too. Now they don’t have to incur the development costs of kojima and still reap some of the benefits by simply having his games on their platform. I think that might be the real reason he was dropped. Why keep him when it’s not guaranteed he’ll make a ton for you when you can just drop him and still take a cut from his games?

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u/Fat_Alphonse Sep 10 '26

Idk, only 2 million sales. Between production costs for the physical version, Steam/retail cuts, games bought on sale... It'd be optimistic to say the game made $100 million and plenty AAA games have a higher budgets than that.

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u/Advanced_Gold1290 Sep 10 '26

Not to mention some of the PHYSINT rumors involve some pretty big actors, along with a partnership with Columbia Pictures for live action material.

I'm sure a current gen MGS successor would print money, but it is going to be a really fucking expensive project.

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u/Clean_Cobbler_3438 Sep 10 '26 edited Sep 10 '26

A current gen MGS successor wouldn't print money.

Current gen MGS would.

Kojimbo's "audience" such as it is likes MGS. DS2 losing money is pretty much all the evidence we need to say that people don't really like Kojima's games, they liked Metal Gear Solid.

Sony saw the writing on the wall after DS2 lost money and bailed, simple as.

ETA for the mouth breathers downvoting- MGS∆ sold as much as DS2 did in a much shorter timeframe and with a much smaller budget. It's not fucking rocket science.

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u/Kylel0519 Sep 10 '26

I mean DS2 was also a console exclusive until literally 6 months ago and console exclusivities sequels usually don’t preform well all the time, I mean ace combat 3 almost sunk the entire franchise

Not to say being exclusive is the ONLY reason it underperformed in sales was because it was an exclusive just that it doesn’t help

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u/Clean_Cobbler_3438 Sep 10 '26

Right, except the 1st game sold more in its exclusivity window, and more copies on console generally. Problem is, it's not a great game, and people were on the "fool me once" mentality by then.

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u/Sorry_Mastodon_8177 Sep 10 '26

There also the thing of people not knowing what the first game is like and a lot of people bought the game out of curiosity In the sequel only the people who liked the first game bought it Same thing happened with the division 1 and 2

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u/originalfilmscoring Sep 10 '26

Speak for yourself. I thought both death stranding were great.

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u/Clean_Cobbler_3438 Sep 10 '26

You're in the minority

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u/originalfilmscoring Sep 10 '26

I suppose. I mean I’m not saying it’s a top selling game but the fans do like it. The second game reviewed a lot better too.

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u/Schwiliinker Sep 10 '26

The thing is in the past dozen years there’s been so many games that are crazy in terms of gameplay that any game that has relatively average gameplay while focusing on story and cinematics instead not selling great wouldn’t surprise me. PS3 era is when non S tier story heavy games were probably a much safer bet I think.

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u/Corronchilejano Sep 10 '26

I am still befuddled that a game can make nearly $200M and still be considered a failure.

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u/Skwalou Sep 10 '26

Well, I don't know actual numbers at all but if it cost $400M to make, then yes making $200M still makes it a financial loss and therefore a failure. I agree though that getting to a point where games cost so much that $200M of revenue is not enough to cover it is pretty ridiculous.

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u/SmoothActuator8132 Sep 10 '26

it's simple math, 2 million sales is $120M in revenue at $60

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u/Fat_Alphonse Sep 10 '26

It's not actually. The game retailed for $70. Digitally on PS5 those sales are straight for Sony. On Steam Sony/Kojima only get a 70% cut of those sales, so $49 per sale there. Physical copies then need to factor in the cost of printing the game as well as whatever store's cut of the sale (usually 10-20%) , so if we want to average that as $60 per sale, fine.

But then these are lifetime sales and Death Stranding 2 has been on sale multiple times. According to Deku Deals its all time low price has been about $40 on PS5, $48 on Steam and $30 physically. Who knows what percentage of the sales were at those prices

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u/SmoothActuator8132 Sep 10 '26

I said revenue, not profit

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u/Fat_Alphonse Sep 10 '26

And with sales it's still not a simple $60 per sale

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u/SmoothActuator8132 Sep 10 '26

I don't think you know what revenue is, Steam and Sony don't take their cut out of each sale individually, the entirety of the sale goes to the publisher and one of their expenses is paying the storefronts their cut at the end of the fiscal year

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u/Fat_Alphonse Sep 10 '26

Okay, so then tell me how it is still a flat $60 per sale regardless of the price?

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u/dope_like Sep 10 '26

Konami fired Kojima for going far over budget and timeline. And the production value of DS2 was very high. I’m not defending Sony but Kojima has a history of breaking budgets

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u/WillemDafoesHugeCock Sep 10 '26

No solid numbers appear to exist but apparently the budget was around $150 million and surprisingly it barely broke even.

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u/Vampiric_V Sep 10 '26

Projected budget of 150-300 million, sold 2 million copies. Being generous and assuming every copy sold is $80 and ignoring things like Valve taking a cut, that's still only 160 million. Barely a profit, most likely not profitable at all

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u/bilbobagheadd Sep 10 '26

No doubt in your mind yet it only sold 2 million copies so didi n fact not make a profit

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u/iTyroneW Sep 10 '26

See Sony is used to losing 400 million dollars on live service slop like Concord and marathon.

Maybe the profit scared them?

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u/seiryu1982 Sep 10 '26

Glad Sony backed out before releasing Concord /s

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u/Fat_Alphonse Sep 10 '26

I know right? Physint will clearly bomb even worse

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u/Spazm2026 Sep 11 '26

they should rerelase concord, people were busy during that weekend

2

u/Dry_Literature8018 Sep 10 '26

Stupid time to worry about that after sinking what must be at least a billion dollars into their failed live service venture, only to receive practically no return (hell, a majority of those projects won't even release). At least Death Stranding still has the possibility to sell a few copies going forward, unlike these other complete follies (and that's not even mentioning the Bungie acquisition, which was a total waste). Why, when Sony's been lighting money on fire to chase a stupid trend, do they draw the line at a highly respected industry auteur and an award winning Hollywood director collabing in a very popular genre?

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u/Mother_Bid_4294 Sep 10 '26

I wonder how much it costed them cause its very positive on steam and this was a bit after the ps5 release

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u/Rishfee Sep 10 '26

"Performance" in this context doesn't mean quality. They wouldn't care if the game was universally panned if it moved 5X more revenue.

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u/EquaYonah Sep 10 '26

The "very positive" doesn't matter as much as the 5953 number of reviews next to it. DS2 was a very expensive game to make and doesn't seem to have made a ton of money back. I imagine they looked at the budget for this new game and got cold feet.

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u/Fat_Alphonse Sep 10 '26

The Hollywood cast alone was likely a huge percentage of the budget. The game may have reviewed well, but it only sold like 2 million copies between PS5 and PC, which is nothing for a AAA title.

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u/ElonMusksQueef Sep 10 '26

Death Stranding sold 20 million copies. 2 sold 2 million. A “Very positive” STEAM review means absolutely nothing to PlayStation.

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u/The_Border_Bandit Sep 10 '26

DS1 didn't sell 20 mil copies. The 20 mil figure comes users played which was largely boosted by releasing on Game Pass in 2022. The actual sales figures are in the neighborhood of 10 mil.

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u/ElonMusksQueef Sep 10 '26

“Estimated at over 19 million copies sold globally by late 2024.”

https://news.northeastern.edu/2025/06/27/death-stranding-2-weird-games/

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u/The_Border_Bandit Sep 10 '26

That article is misinterpreting the milestone that was announced. Kojima Productions announced that in late 2024, Death Stranding had reached 20 million "porters", not sales. That means 20 million people have played the game, not bought. That 20 million figure is gonna include people game sharing and playing on game pass. The actual sales figures are estimated to be around 10 mil at the max.

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u/MissingScore777 Sep 10 '26

Yeah the big leak of internal sales numbers had it at 7mil only a couple of years before this.

No way it sold 13mil out of nowhere after having already been out 3/4 years.

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u/Alib902 Sep 10 '26

Positive reviews doesn't mean sales

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u/brandonsp111 Sep 10 '26

Steam has trained it's users to look at the wrong numbers lmao

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u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo Sep 10 '26

5953 reviews kind of imply the copies sold is quite pathetic.

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u/Glittering-Pin-1343 Sep 10 '26

It has sold 2 mil since release. While 1 has sold 27 mil this far. I think they expect the sequel to sell a bit more than 2 mil due to the first games sales.

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u/The_Border_Bandit Sep 10 '26

DS1 sold around 10 mil, not 27 mil. 27 mil is how many people have played since the game released and that was largely boosted by game pass.

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u/Mother_Bid_4294 Sep 10 '26

Is it 2 mil on pc only? Or total over ps5/pc release?

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u/Glittering-Pin-1343 Sep 10 '26

Total sales as far as I know. Was 5 months ago so might've sold more since.

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u/hippie_harlot Sep 10 '26

In all fairness, review scores do not equate to sales performance.

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u/Sorry_Mastodon_8177 Sep 10 '26

Show cod 3 reception aswell