'I feel a lot of affection and affinity towards the PC,' says Hideo Kojima

When Game of the Year.

In a recent interview orchestrated by publisher 505 Games, Death Stranding director, designer, and writer Hideo Kojima discussed the reason for making this port, given that several of his previous games have been console-exclusives. 

"When I first started in this industry," he said, "I worked on PC games. It was quite a while before I started to make games for consoles, so I feel a lot of affection and affinity towards the PC. Games are developed on PCs, after all. But PlayStation gamers and core PC s are a different market, and the reason Death Stranding is being released on PC is a simple desire for as many people as possible to be able to play the game. What I'm most proud of is the fact that we created and brushed up the PC version or release ourselves. That's something that's usually outsourced, so it's a point of pride for us."

Kojima also talked about the difficulties of satisfying PC gamers, who he called "pretty vocal and opinionated about games". Most obviously, insuring compatibility with a range of different hardware wasn't easy given the disparity between high- and low-end hardware, so "where to set the baseline was therefore a major issue". Another was getting the mouse controls right. "I'm not really good at playing the game with a mouse," Kojima said, "but the PC version had to mouse controls, of course, but configuring them was tricky. I left that to our staff, though."

Discussing the game itself, Kojima explained that its inspiration came from the observation that, despite how technology connects us, people are more isolated than ever. "In such a society, I wanted to create lighthearted, positive connections between people within the game. I didn't set out to create a new genre or anything grand like that."

Kojima Productions is currently working on a game that we're expecting to hear more about soon. Right now, Death Stranding is half-price on Steam and the Epic Games Store.