The Microsoft brand continues to be very busy the last couple of months. After the gargantuan acquisition of ZeniMax Media back in September 2020 and bolstering their Game Pass library, the team said they were far from done. Whether or not that meant more studio acquisitions has only been left for fans and pundits to debate, and rumors of purchasing brands like Sega and Konami made the rounds over the recent weeks.

Something that has been gaining traction has been the word that Microsoft and Kojima Productions are in talks about a title in the works being published under the green brand. According to Jeff Grubb of VentureBeat, their was speculation among fans that the upcoming PlayStation 5 exclusive Abandoned was a secret Hideo Kojima game, based on its ambiguity of its trailer and the fact that there's very sketchy information on the studio Blue Box Games. 

With no other core information to go on, that's left at speculation and nothing more. As for the potential arrangement of Microsoft publishing a Hideo Kojima project, it would possibly serve as another spirited effort for Xbox to try penetrate that Japanese market, something they haven't been able to do since even the height of the Xbox 360. 

“I cannot confirm if Xbox closed the deal yet", Grubb states, "but my understanding is that Kojima is the focus of a Microsoft plan to leverage Japanese talent.”

During a stream last month, fans took notice of the Ludens figure on Microsoft vice president Phil Spencer's shelf. Ludens, an intrepid astronaut, is the mascot of Kojima Productions. While it could be a mere coincidence and Phil just love collectables, is a fan of Death Stranding and Kojima, or both, the internet is going to internet and the community began to circulate rumors that there's definitely something going on behind the scenes. 

It's quite fascinating in 2021 so see Sony narrow down a lot of their in-house Japanese production and Microsoft make aggressive moves to broaden their appeal in the east. Hideo Kojima is certainly a pretty cavalier attempt where I feel the results may vary. Death Stranding sold well early on, but many details about its lifetime sales seem to be sketchy and undetermined. It was quite a divisive and polarizing game that left fans more fighting with its dissenters than talking about the game itself.

With a digital E3 on the horizon, we'll be dialed in to see if any of this information comes to fruition.