Sony Pulled Decima Engine Access From Kojima — and PHYSINT May Pay the Price

Decima Engine, developed by Guerrilla Games, powered both Death Stranding titles — Kojima Productions may no longer have access to it.. Source: Photo: Sony

Sony's split with Kojima Productions carries a technical sting that's only now becoming clear: alongside losing its publishing deal for PHYSINT, Kojima's studio almost certainly lost access to Decima — Sony's proprietary game engine — forcing what could be a full mid-development rebuild on Unreal Engine 5. Bloomberg (Jason Schreier) broke the story of Sony's June cancellation, citing missed deadlines, budget overruns, and disappointing sales of both Death Stranding games.

The engine problem

Decima was built by Guerrilla Games — the studio behind the Horizon series — and Sony made it available to Kojima Productions at no cost for both Death Stranding 1 and Death Stranding 2. It's a tight, well-optimized engine that handles open-world environments and cinematic storytelling well, which is exactly what Kojima's games demand. There's no confirmed statement that PHYSINT was built on Decima, but given that both previous Kojima-Sony titles used it, there was little reason to switch.

When the Sony partnership ended, that engine license almost certainly went with it. Decima is not publicly available — only PlayStation Studios and a handful of select partners have ever had access to the source code, per Power Up Gaming. Kojima Productions now faces porting assets, physics systems, and custom tooling to a new foundation — the kind of work that can cost months, sometimes years.

What this means for the game

Xbox announced the new publishing deal for PHYSINT on September 9–10, 2026, stepping in after Kojima spent roughly three months finding a replacement partner. The commercial context matters here: Death Stranding 2 sold around 2.5 million copies across PS5 and PC, compared to Death Stranding 1's 5 million — a 50% drop that spooked Sony's budget planners, according to analyst estimates from Gaming Bolt.

The engine switch adds development time to a project that already lost months to the publisher search. Beyond PHYSINT, the Decima divorce also closes the door on future Death Stranding sequels in any meaningful sense — the series' distinctive physics and world-building are baked into an engine Kojima no longer controls.

Xbox's involvement likely means Game Pass distribution and a multiplatform release, though no platform details or release window have been confirmed. For now, PHYSINT fans are waiting on two unknowns: how long the engine migration takes, and whether Xbox gives Kojima the runway to finish it right.