Ever since Death Stranding's release, there has been much speculation on what famed video game director Hideo Kojima and his team at Kojima Productions is planning to do next. While Kojima himself has hinted at many directions he would like to take the studio, Death Stranding's release seemingly ended the company's current publishing partnership with Sony, meaning whatever Kojima Productions moves on to next will be an entirely third-party project. Now, the studio has confirmed that it has started development on its next project alongside a plethora of job listings.

The first major indication that Kojima Productions was starting work on its next big project came only a few days ago when the studio's in-house composer and audio director, Ludwig Forssell, shared an image on Twitter of his first music recording session during the COVID-19 pandemic. Forssell claimed that the session was for an "undisclosed project," leading many to speculate that the composer was working on the soundtrack for Hideo Kojima's next project.

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The job listings posted to both Kojima Productions' website and LinkedIn give a very vague idea of what the studio is looking towards with its next title. Kojima has even claimed before that he wants the studio to move outside of just developing video games and even into the realm of anime and film production. Thankfully, the LinkedIn job listings indicate that Kojima Productions' next work will most definitely be a video game, with the studio seeking out game designers, programmers, AI, and physics programmers, to name a just a few of the 25 roles the studio is looking to fill in its Tokyo offices.

While Hideo Kojima himself has not directly confirmed exactly what his next project will be, earlier this year he claimed he was tossing around many ideas for what the studio could work on next. He claimed that he had started watching horror movies again with the intent of making "the scariest horror game," which lead many to believe he would be returning to some of the ideas from the canceled Silent Hills for his next project. Kojima also has a friendly relationship with beloved horror manga artist Junji Ito, who has claimed many times he is not working with Kojima on a new project, but would, given the opportunity. Kojima also revealed recently that he would like to return to the world of Death Stranding at some point.

Kojima Productions was founded in 2005 but became an independent studio in 2015 following Hideo Kojima's departure from Konami after the cancelation of Silent Hills and the difficult development of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, which was released unfinished and with Kojima's named scrubbed from the game's box art a few months out from release. Kojima Productions soon entered a partnership with Sony Computer Entertainment in December 2015 and announced Death Stranding during PlayStation's E3 2016 press conference. The game would then release on November 8th 2019.

Given Kojima's habit of announcing games very early into development (Metal Gear Solid 5, Silent Hills, Death Stranding,) we could expect to see an tease for what the title may be before the end of the year, possibly even at The Game Awards given Kojima's relationship with host Geoff Keighley. Judging by Death Stranding's marketing however, don't expect that to give any indication on what the game will actually end being.

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