Kojima Productions has announced that Death Stranding has officially gone gold. This means that the game has completed development, has been printed onto a master disc, and is headed out to manufacturers to be mass produced leading up to its street date on November 8.
It’s been a strange and interesting road to release for Hideo Kojima’s latest game. Death Stranding was announced at E3 2016, and despite Kojima’s admission that development was slightly behind schedule, the game was eventually given a solid launch date of November 8. As Kojima himself has pointed out, this clocks Death Stranding’s development at just over three years (which is fairly normal for new games). But Kojima is still prone to teasing rather than providing substantial information, and with little to go on regarding the game itself, fans were worried and skeptical. The developer has addressed those concerns to some extent with a 48-minute gameplay demo at TGS 2019, but even that was only a hint of what’s to come.
Today, Kojima Productions confirmed on Twitter that Death Stranding has officially wrapped development and gone gold. The tweet credits the entire Kojima Productions team for their hard work, as well as publisher Sony and fellow developer Guerilla Games, which was responsible for creating the Decima engine used by the game. The tweet also includes a photo of all the Kojima Productions developers posing together, and another of Kojima himself holding the master disc.
Hundreds of people have already responded to the tweet, congratulating the team on their accomplishment and expressing their excitement for the game. Several prominent industry figures and studios have also chimed in, as is often the case when a AAA game goes gold. The first developers to congratulate Kojima Productions were part of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, including Sucker Punch, Bend Studio and Media Molecule - all developers of PlayStation exclusives. Death Stranding will also be a PS4 exclusive for the foreseeable future.
It’s still not entirely clear what Death Stranding will be like, but we won’t have to wait very much longer to find out. Kojima has been talking up the game for a while, claiming it’s unlike anything that’s come before it, that it will push the medium forward, and most people won’t understand it. The validity of those claims remains to be seen, but Kojima and his team are apparently very satisfied with the way the game turned out. With Death Stranding finished, it sounds like Kojima Productions may already be conceiving its next game, and that game could possibly involve Keanu Reeves.
Next: Hideo Kojima Addresses Death Stranding “Walking Sim” Criticisms
Source: Kojima Productions
