Hideo Kojima Says He Makes Every Game Like It Could Be His Last, Promises PHYSINT Will Be “Quite Different”

Hideo Kojima has no shortage of ideas left. The problem, as he puts it, is increasingly whether he has enough time to make all of them.

Speaking on the Koji10 Podcast, Kojima reflected on reaching his 40th year in the games industry and how that has changed the way he approaches projects like Physint, his upcoming espionage game.

“I don’t know how much time I have left,” Kojima said. “I’m much older than you all. So I make each one as though it could be my last.”

It is not the first time Kojima has spoken this way recently.

When he turned 63 in August, he wrote that the number of things he “has to do” and “wants to do” continues to grow, while the amount of time available to actually do them keeps shrinking. He said that reality has forced him to repeatedly reassess how he spends his time, despite his desire to keep making more games.

Physint carries a lot of sentimental value for Hideo Kojima. Kojima entered the industry in 1986, making 2026 his 40th year as a game creator, while Kojima Productions is also celebrating its 10th anniversary. He has described Physint as something of a culmination of that career.

When Sony pulled out of Physint, he still wanted to preserve the project, partly because of how much personal importance he had attached to it and partly because of the roughly 200 employees at Kojima Productions depending on that work.

Physint has since found a new publishing partner in Xbox and remains in development. Bill Skarsgård has been confirmed as its lead, although Kojima says performance filming has not yet begun and the game is still relatively early in production.

With Physint he promises that it will be something brand new and “I want plenty of new ideas and a different kind of spy action,” the director said. “It’s quite different.”

Despite all of this, Kojima is not slowing down. He is still juggling Physint, OD, and Death Stranding projects while continuing to talk about ideas beyond them.

Despite his games sometimes drawing people’s ire and criticisms for their out-of-the-box, being geared towards a specific type of audience or just because of his fanbase, the gaming world will lose a legend the day Kojima-san retires.

Physint is still only in early-production with the motion captures not even started yet, and OD, which must release first, still doesn’t have a release date. Regardless of when Hideo Kojima retires, we will still get to experience at least 2 more of his passion projects.