When Blue Box Game Studios' upcoming cinematic survival sim Abandoned was announced as a PS5 exclusive in a recent PlayStation Blog post, the gaming community was a little suspicious. While it's not unusual for Sony's blog to promote upcoming titles like Abandoned for the system, the decision to do so for a game that's being developed by a relatively unknown indie studio from the Netherlands seemed to some like an incredibly strange one indeed.
Much like the name of its upcoming title, the studio's social media accounts had been abandoned for almost half a decade and its website made no reference to the game either. What's more, the studio has no prior experience working on a game of this magnitude; which led many to wonder whether Blue Box was simply a mask behind which another developer was hiding. Having done something similar with "Moby Dick Studio" in the build up to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain’s release and with rumors that a new Kojima Productions project announcement is imminent, Hideo Kojima was high on the list of suspects.
Following intense speculation, the team over at Blue Box Game Studios have now released an official statement on its site to distance themselves from the rumors. The response makes it clear that the studio has no association whatsoever with Kojima Productions and that Abandoned is a passion project being worked on exclusively by members of the Blue Box team.
Our response to the Hideo Kojima Rumors
We received several emails regarding the Hideo Kojima rumor. We have no association with Hideo Kojima nor do we claim to have any association nor was it our intention to claim such a statement. We are a small group of developers working on a passionate title we wanted to work on for a long time. We have been assisting other studios in the past with their projects and we wanted to work on our very first big project. While it is true that we've been working on small projects in the past, we certainly didn't use that for marketing purposes. We hope this has clarified this matter and hope to see you all in our very first gameplay reveal of Abandoned.
- The Team @BLUE BOX Game Studios
The news comes on the same day that VentureBeat journalist Jeffrey Grubb revealed that Hideo Kojima is in talks with Xbox to publish his next game; something that came partly in response to the rumors about Abandoned being a secret Kojima title. This isn't the first time that Grubb has hinted at a potential partnership between Microsoft and Kojima either; having previously suggested this could be a possibility following comments made by Phil Spencer at the beginning of last month. While Grubb stopped short of confirming that a deal has been struck, he seems fairly confident that talks have at least taken place.
While controversial, Kojima Productions' debut title Death Stranding was able to not only recoup development costs but turn a profit for the studio which would explain why Microsoft might be keen to strike an exclusivity deal for the studio's sophomore title. Despite having launched on the PS4 six months prior, Death Stranding's PC launch was hugely successful and the game has generated millions of dollars in sales since going live on Steam last July. Whether Kojima's next project will be a direct sequel to Death Stranding or a brand new IP remains to be seen though, as too does the console that it will be available on.
Abandoned is slated to launch later this year exclusively on the PlayStation 5.
Source: Blue Box Game Studios