You won’t need a PlayStation console to play Kojima Productions’ . While Sony is still publishing the only console version of the game, due next month, Kojima Productions and 505 Games announced today they are collaborating on a PC version of the title, due in the “early summer of 2020.
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Further Reading
Hideo Kojima announces , his first game since leaving Konami
That may come as a surprise to some, given the way Sony has marketed the title for years now. was first revealed with great fanfare as a part of Sony’s 2016 E3 press conference (then again, got similar treatment in 2015 but is also coming to PC this year). At that time, a Sony press release announcing the game noted that the company “will continue to expand the software portfolio with an attractive title lineup and ” (emphasis added).
Before that, Kojima described his first Konami-free game as a “collaboration with PlayStation” in a video with Sony CEO Andrew House, adding that he was “thrilled to embark on creating a new franchise with PlayStation.” And the game’s baffling 2018 E3 trailer led off with a large “Only on PlayStation” banner, which seems pretty hard to misinterpret.
The clues were there
All that said, other Sony press materials (including that 2016 press release) were careful to only call the game a “console exclusive” on PS4, meaning a PC release was still a possibility. Going back even further, when Kojima Productions was officially unveiled in 2015, a Medium-posted Q&A (since deleted, archived here) said directly that the company’s first game “is planned to become available on PC (after PS4).” That announcement also clearly demarcated Kojima Productions as an independent studio, separate from Sony, and noted that future Kojima Productions games might not be PlayStation exclusives at all.
An eagle-eyed observer on gaming forum ResetEra also noticed back in August that was no longer included on Sony’s official listing of “Only on PlayStation” exclusives. was included on that list as recently as May, suggesting someone at Sony belatedly remembered (or noticed) that a PC version was still in the works.
In any case, the timing of the PC version’s official announcement is interesting, coming just a few weeks from the game’s Nov. 8 PS4 release. That’s in stark contrast to , which was only confirmed for a PC release last month, nearly a year after its highly successful console debut.
‘s PC publisher, 505 Games, has not announced which digital storefronts the game will be available on. But 505 Games’ recently launched as an Epic Games Store exclusive on PC, thanks in part to an apparent $10.5 million upfront revenue guarantee from Epic itself.
