Hideo Kojima’s independent studio, Kojima Productions, may no longer have access to the proprietary Decima Engine following the cancellation of his partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment. According to Forbes, Kojima’s shift away from PlayStation means his team can no longer utilize the Sony-owned engine that powered both Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. The loss of this tech stack raises questions for the studio’s roadmap, particularly for its upcoming action-espionage title, PHYSINT.
While Kojima’s cloud-focused horror project OD is confirmed to be running on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, the technical foundation for PHYSINT remains uncertain. Originally conceived as a transmedia project blending video games with cinematic film production, any early framework built on Decima will now require a migration to an alternative engine, such as Unreal Engine 5. Industry analysts say an engine pivot mid-development is certain to add time and financial overhead to the project.
This potential shift toward Unreal Engine 5 has sparked widespread concern among gamers, who point to its reputation for poor optimization. Kojima Productions was widely considered to be among the best to use the Decima Engine, with countless viral clips highlighting Death Stranding 2’s lifelike character rendering and environments.
The loss of Decima also presents a massive hurdle for the future of the Death Stranding franchise. Because the first two installments were built natively on a heavily customized version of Decima co-developed alongside Guerrilla Games, any potential Death Stranding 3 or spin-offs face technical hurdles, such as porting existing assets, physics systems, and custom world-building tools over to a new engine.
