On July 24, 2026, Kojima Productions revealed that their first game has reached millions of players after it was built on an engine delivered on a USB stick from a Dutch developer.

This was the story of Death Stranding. The series has since reached 27 million players in total, but fans might be surprised to know that the adventures of Sam Porter have crossed many bridges to come to their screens.

At CEDEC 2026, Kojima Productions' CTO Akio Sakamoto revealed a critical gap. The studio lacked time to build an engine capable of handling open-world, photo-realistic, dynamic-weather gameplay.

Guerrilla Games stepped in, delivering its Decima Engine via USB, as explained in this report by Japanese outlet Gamer.

With it, Kojima Productions was able to bring Death Stranding to life. The first game sold 185,909 in Japan in its first week, according to Famitsu. By April 2025, 20 million players had played it across the world.

This includes an install base across platforms such as PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Later, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was released on June 26, 2025. The game sold a total of over 2 million copies, as per Alinea Analytics as of April 2026.

It also reportedly earned $32.6M just from its Steam release, where it sold 425,000 copies in its very first week.

Unlike its predecessor, the sequel has yet to find an Xbox release. However, Hideo Kojima's next game will be published by PlayStation's rival.

Hideo Kojima's 27M-player success now funds his most ambitious project

OD is Hideo Kojima's next horror game featuring Sophia Lillis and Hunter Schafer. The game, according to Kojima, was rejected by many publishers before Microsoft took it up.

The game has a star cast and is being co-written by Hollywood's horror genius, Jordan Peele.

"What he's cooking up here is completely immersive, utterly terrifying, and I'm absolutely honored to be collaborating with the GOAT," Peele had said as per GamesRadar+.

Its concept has not been revealed entirely, but it utilizes Xbox's Cloud Gaming as a core for its gameplay. According to Hideo Kojima, it's something "no one has ever seen before."

Furthermore, it will be Hideo Kojima's first collaboration with Xbox as the publisher.

How do you feel about the upcoming title? Let us know in the comments.

Read more at Gaming Community by Max Level!

Written by

Prit Chauhan