A new report suggests Google passed up on a Hideo Kojima horror title for Stadia. It looks like the tech giant was not interested in bringing Kojima's project to the cloud gaming service Stadia.

Google made it first big foray into gaming when it released its streaming platform Stadia in 2019. It aimed to reach a wide audience by allowing gamers to play anywhere without needing hardware like a high tier gaming PC or console. Hideo Kojima is a famous developer, designer, and producer in gaming with a portfolio of historic titles like Metal Gear. But it looks like even after Kojima left Konami and went independent, Google did not want to bring one of the most influential figures in Japanese gaming to Stadia.

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From the report, Kojima was working together with Google to potentially bring a horror title to the platform. Under Kojima Productions, the project would have been episodic in nature as well. However, the entire thing ended up getting canceled after being blocked by Stadia GM Phil Harrison. This will have been surprising to those behind the scenes because apparently the Japanese studio took a lot of interest in working with Cloud gaming.

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It is possible that followers of Hideo Kojima knew about this falling out before this official reveal. In summer 2020, Kojima did an interview with a Japanese publication where he brought up a major title cancellation. He expressed his anger in the interview, but stated that this result is always possible in the gaming industry. However, Kojima Productions did not provide any additional follow up to this information.

This is not the first time that Kojima will have faced resistance while trying to create games. Back in 2014, Kojima Productions developed the horror game P.T. and released a demo for the PlayStation 4. However, Konami had the P.T. demo removed after cancelling the project. Even Kojima's most recent release, Death Stranding, faced critical backlash due to the unique but obscure gameplay. While the Metal Gear series is iconic and has an strong fanbase, it seems like Kojima has had some difficulty regaining a foothold after breaking with Konami.

That said, this problem could relate to the current state of Stadia rather than Kojima himself. It is not easy to bring a new platform into the industry against PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo devices. Google Stadia is no exception and has struggled to become a major player. With Google scaling the service back, it could just be that the company was not willing to take more risks with a Kojima title. Unfortunately, fans will never know what the episodic horror game would have been, but can still look forward to whatever Kojima's next game will be.

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Source: VGC