Update: Sony Computer Entertainment president Andrew House took to YouTube late Tuesday night to confirm that Hideo Koijma's first independently produced game will be made as a "collaboration with PlayStation" to launch exclusively on Sony consoles. A Q&A posted on Medium (since taken down, but still available on Google Cache) confirmed that the new Kojima Productions is not a subsidiary of Sony, and that future Kojima Productions games (past the first) won't necessarily be exclusive to PlayStation. Kojima's next game, which is being described as "something completely new," will also come to the PC after its PS4 release.

Original Story

It looks like Hideo Kojima's long, troubled history with publisher Konami has finally come to an end. Translations of a Nikkei news article out of Japan say the Metal Gear Solid creator officially left the company on December 15, taking a few team members from his Kojima Productions studio with him to start a new company. The report also suggests that Kojima's first new title under the independent company could debut on Sony's PlayStation 4.

If the report is accurate, it wouldn't exactly come as a surprise. Relations between Kojima and Konami have been strained since March at latest , when Kojima's name was largely removed from promotional images on Konami's website (his name was later removed from the final game box for Metal Gear Solid V as well) and Kojima Productions LA was renamed Konami Los Angeles Studio (that studio was later shut down entirely ). Then word came that Kojima's work on asequel with film director Guillermo del Toro had been canceled and that Konami as a whole was shifting to a focus on mobile games and was no longer planning any new Metal Gear titles

In October, The New Yorker published a story suggesting that Kojima had left Konami earlier that month, just before the release of Metal Gear Online. A Konami spokesperson denied that report, saying Kojima was just "on vacation" and was still an employee at the company. That report also suggested that a non-compete clause in Kojima's contract prevented him from talking about any outside work until December.

Konami still retains the right to the Metal Gear Solid name and intellectual property, as well as that of other series Kojima has worked on such as Snatcher, Boktai, Zone of the Enders, and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.