Rumor: Hideo Kojima in talks with Microsoft to publish his next game. The company is not fucking around!

Buried in the news today regarding whether or not Abandoned is a Hideo Kojima game (it’s not) is a larger nugget to chew on. Apparently, Microsoft is pushing hard to land a deal to publish Kojima’s next game. Man, that would be a huge fucking get for the Xbox Ecosystem!

Hit the jump for the news, and also the easter-eggy photo that fans think confirms it.

Venture Beat:

Kojima Productions is making a new game, but it is not Abandoned for PlayStation 5. Earlier today, Sony Interactive Entertainment revealed a trailer for Abandoned, which is a horror project from developer Blue Box Games. But that trailer, and the developer’s spotty history, are just odd enough to cause some people to speculate that Abandoned is secretly the next game from Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima. That is not the case.

One of the reasons people believe Abandoned is from Kojima is because it’s difficult to find a lot of information about Blue Box Games. But that isn’t because it is a shell corporation for Kojima Productions. Instead, Blue Box is simply a small studio that has never released a major console game before.

Blue Box’s website is dead. It has a game in Early Access on Steam that it has stopped updating. And it has yet another similar game that it attempted to launch on Steam’s now-defunct Greenlight program.

I get it, though. Maybe Kojima was playing the long-con. And it was him behind this studio all along. He was simply waiting for the moment to strike, and that time has come.

But the biggest piece of evidence I have that Abandoned is not a Kojima joint is that Kojima is in talks with Microsoft about publishing his next game, according to a source familiar with the matter. And yes, that statue on Phil Spencer’s shelf was referencing a potential deal with the legendary developer. I cannot confirm if Xbox closed the deal yet, but my understanding is that Kojima is the focus of a Microsoft plan to leverage Japanese talent.

So you’ll have to enjoy Abandoned absent Kojima’s marketing stunts.