Really odd indeed, many of the Sony executives used to be relatively "It's OK to fail once, you've proven you can output stuff given resources", but seemingly there is a new Sony now where not obsessively cutting costs and doing bets isn't part of the culture anymore. Sad to see.

Kojima has a history of overspending by trying to make grandiose but weird games. And while they performed well, MGS4 sold less then The Last of Us or other big hits. I think that Kojima's games are games that people talk about more than they play. Probably MGS5 is the only one that actually "plays good".

The W in MBA stands for Wisdom!

Sony also presumably has a lot of visibility into the project, and it was already being framed as "genre-defining." I've loved various Kojima games but especially with the other exclusives line-up that Sony has, I can understand this is just too much risk for them.

It remains to be seen what egg will be laid in this case, how many golden ones may come after, and how many end up on Playstation anyway.

Kojima is infamous for being difficult to work with as well as expensive, and Death Stranding 2 didn't do that well after the already-divisive Death Stranding. I think describing him as a generation-defining artist is a bit much, something a devoted fan might say. His mistreatment of David Hayter because David isn't an A-list Hollywood actor really soured my view of him. By all accounts, Kojima has a fantasy of being a Hollywood director and hanging out with movie stars, and he wants to make gigantic expensive Hollywood movie-esque projects. I'm not surprised Sony would get cold feet.