Recent reports claim that the budget for the collaboration between Hideo Kojima's espionage action game Physint and Xbox is as high as $400 million. Individuals directly familiar with the contract state that Xbox's budget for the project is far lower than this figure.
Speculation surrounding this partnership emerged after Xbox's recent restructuring and layoff of thousands of employees. Some linked the layoffs to the funding arrangement for Physint; sources familiar with the relevant contracts denied that the layoffs were intended to finance the project.
Physint was initially announced by PlayStation as a title marking Hideo Kojima's return to the espionage action genre represented by the Metal Gear series. Xbox subsequently announced a collaboration with Hideo Kojima on the project, drawing attention to the partnership's budget.
Previously, Chris Dring of GameBusiness stated on a podcast that Xbox had allocated a $400 million budget for Physint. Jason Schreier of Bloomberg later questioned this figure, and Dring retracted his original statement. Sources with access to the contract indicated that the amount involved in Xbox and Kojima Productions advancing the project is only a small fraction of the rumored figure.
Sources also suggested a possibility: the $400 million figure might correspond to an amount previously shouldered by Sony and PlayStation; this explanation has not been confirmed by contract documents. According to the same source, the agreement reached between Xbox and Kojima Productions also involves film and TV licensing rights for Physint, and adjusts the cooperation terms for another horror game from both parties, OD.