The “blues” deny involvement with Kojima Productions’ game’s appearance on the “greens'” monthly subscription service.

Death Stranding was Hideo Kojima’s first post-Konami game, which he put together with the help of Sony to recreate Kojima Productions. The PlayStation 4-exclusive then received an extended edition (Death Stranding: Director’s Cut) on PlayStation 5 and PC. Still, Sony Interactive Entertainment is not the publisher on PC, as 505 Games was the custodian of the PlayStation-to-PC route (and it was an excellent financial decision for them).

Push Square received a statement from Sony, who said that Kojima Productions and 505 Games are handling the PC release of Death Stranding and that Sony Interactive Entertainment had nothing to do with the game showing up on Xbox Game Pass from August 23. The odd thing is that Sony is the sole owner of the IP, so they could prevent Sam “Porter” Bridges’ story from appearing in the Redmond games portfolio.

Since Sony was also the backer of Death Stranding, it seems strange that the company’s name appears in the video announcing the move to Game Pass. (But we can also name a role reversal example: there was Age of Empires II, which had a PS2 port in Europe and Japan courtesy of Konami. At that time, the game’s developer, Ensemble Studios, was already owned by Microsoft…) And you can’t bring up MLB The Show, being made at SIE’s San Diego studio, as another example because it’s a multiplatform game. MLB owns the annual baseball title’s IP, and they’ve probably put the word out to Sony to make it multiplatform ASAP.

So Sony and Kojima Productions have agreed that Sony Interactive Entertainment will fund the development of Death Stranding but has leased the PC version to someone else on the condition that it remains a PlayStation-exclusive Kojima game on consoles. However, Sony has reportedly prevented something from appearing on Game Pass a few times…

Source: PSL