Only Xbox Was Interested In Kojima’s Horror Game, Other Companies Didn’t ‘Understand The Concept’

Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima has been working on a horror game, OD, for Xbox for a few years now. Despite a trailer and some teases, we still don’t know much about what it really is. And in a recent interview, Kojima said that only Xbox was interested in whatever he is cooking up.

Hideo Kojima spoke to Entertainment Weekly as part of a larger Xbox 25th anniversary cover feature and told the outlet that with OD, he wanted to do something “new” and “different.” According to the famous game designer and director, he’s been working on the concept for OD since around the same time he started developing Death Stranding. He claims that OD features a “new game system” that “no one has ever seen before.” And apparently his plans for OD were so strange and new that every publisher and game company around passed. Until, that is, he talked to Xbox and its former boss, Phil Spencer.

“I pitched to many people, to the big companies, and also to the up-and-coming companies,” said Kojima. “All of them said the same thing. They said that I’m crazy, and that they really don’t understand the concept—that they will not be able to do it.” But Spencer got it, apparently, and signed the game under Xbox. And new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told EW that she found OD to be a “deeply moving game.”  So it seems Kojima has Xbox’s support for the foreseeable future as he and his team wrap up development on OD.

“I wanted to go beyond the limit of the ‘scariness’ that other games had reached,” said Kojima. And interestingly, he claims that if the game is too scary for people, there is a system in place that can help them push through.

“It’s a single-player game, and I wanted to make it as scary as possible. But for those that might stop playing when it gets too scary, I have thought of a system that will allow them to keep going. I can’t say much more, because it’ll give too much of a hint on the system, and I could get in trouble for saying too much!”

OD currently doesn’t have a release date. The game stars Sophia Lillis and Hunter Schafer. Jordan Peele, the director behind Nope and Us, is involved in the game’s creation.