Summary
By now, most gamers know thatHideo Kojimais something of a social media aficionado. On any given day, Kojima can be spottedreposting fan artorsharing all the cool things he gets to do for a living. Oh, and lest we forget, constantly gushing over the films he loves – right now, that’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Pretty mundane stuff.
However, every so often, Kojima will share something that sends the masses into a frenzy. On Thursday, he did just that.Taking to Threads (the Meta-backed Twitter-esque platform), Kojima shared a photo of his now defunct projectP.T.In typical Hideo Kojima fashion, no other context was added, but it was enough to get fans stirring.
The image, which is shown above, showcases Norman Reedus' unnamed protagonist holding a flashlight. Next to him is the logo for P.T. Of course, P.T. was an acronym for Playable Teaser, because that’s exactly what it was when it was shadowdropped all the way back in 2014.
P.T. Will Be Celebrating A Decade Since Its Release
It may be hard to believe, but soon it’ll be exactly an entire decade since the world was introduced to P.T. and the mysterious 7780s Studio. The game was originally teased out at Gamescom, and a playable demo was made available shortly after on the PlayStation Store. Unbeknownst at the time, P.T. was just a tease for a larger project that Kojima was working on.
That project was a new Silent Hill video game, titled Silent Hills. That game was set to be a new entry in the horror franchise, and it was meant to be a collaboration between Kojima and famous filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. Reedus was contracted to be the game’s protagonist. Of course, none of this was known until gamers completed the demo. That’s when a teaser for Silent Hills was played.
The demo was a massive hit, and recontextualized what a teaser could be. PlayStation revealed during the 2014 Tokyo Game Showthat it had been downloaded over a million times. In the end, all of it was for naughtas Silent Hills was canceled. Then, it was announced that P.T. would be removed from the PlayStation Store. Not only that, but it was rendered completely undownloadable, meaning even those who had already “owned” the demo could not retrieve it.
In the wake of Silent Hills' cancelation, many have long wondered what could have been. Of course, Kojima would go on to work onDeath Stranding, where Reedus was used as its protagonist. Many have tried to recreate P.T. in the time since, and others have tried to emulate the way it handled horror.
Meanwhile, an entire secondary market has sprung up,where those who never deleted P.T. off their hard drives are selling their consoles. Perhaps Kojima is feeling nostalgic, or maybe he’s trolling. Either way, there’s no denying the impact that P.T. had on the gaming industry, and as we close in on a decade since its release, it’s something worth looking back on.
