Rumors: Death Stranding is a commercial failure, and its development was restarted a year and a half before the release

This was told by one of the moderators of the Resetera forum under the nickname Dusk Golem. He begins his post by saying that he cannot speak with full confidence about the reliability of the source. According to him:

• Death Stranding turned out to be a failure. At the start, the game sold well, but then sales almost stopped. At the moment, more than 3 million copies of the game are gathering dust in warehouses.
• The production stage was problematic. Initially, it was assumed that the game would be more gloomy and scary. However, a year and a half before the release, the development was “gently” restarted.
• Sony and Kojima Productions had a falling out. Moreover, other Sony studios were unhappy with the budgets the company spends on Death Stranding. All this led to the fact that Death Stranding is not among the titles for PlayStation 5, and the game itself was obliged to be released in a shorter time, despite the restart of development.
• Sony plans to attract Konami funding for the development of a new Silent Hill. It will be handled by Kojima Productions, which is stung by the failure of Death Stranding and is eager to prove its professionalism within the framework of a new project.
• PlayStation owners expect that the development of horror with a smaller budget under a popular license and with Kojima’s name on the cover will allow them to make good money, and the product itself may turn out to be a strong title for the platform.
• Such a game may be the new Silent Hill. In parallel with Kojima Productions, they will work on another project on this IP Keiichiro Toyama and the staff of Team Silent closed in 2005. Recall that Toyama and Co were responsible for creating the original series of games.

Two facts indirectly speak about the weak sales of Death Stranding. Firstly, Sony did not share any milestones (for comparison, when God of War sold 3.1 million copies in the first three days, Sony announced this a month later). Secondly, the game really quickly left the American and British charts. At the same time, in Japan, the game turned out to be the largest launch of a new IP in the region for the current generation of consoles.

In Russia, the game could have very good sales:

• From a conversation with the domestic gaming store GameShop, we learned that the game sold better at the start than, for example, Marvel’s Spider-Man blockbuster (for the starting quarter of 2018, global sales of this game amounted to 9 million).
• According to “M.Video-Eldorado”, at the start of sales in Russia Death Stranding has been the fastest selling PlayStation 4 exclusive in Russia for the past two years. In the first week of sales, it sold more copies than God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man in the same period.

Also on the topic:

• Death Stranding sets records in Japan. The best start of a new IP since Dark SoulsDeath Stranding lost to Days Gone in terms of initial sales in British retail
• Is there any news?