Kojima Productions Opens Its 10th-Anniversary Show in Tokyo With Death Stranding Prototype Footage

Kojima Productions' 10th-anniversary exhibition opened in Tokyo on October 31. BEYOND THE STRAND: The Odyssey of Creation and Endeavor runs at Azabudai Hills Gallery until December 20, and it's less a victory lap than a look inside the studio Hideo Kojima set up on December 16, 2015: development material for both Death Stranding games, and the first look in public at pieces of the two games it is still making.

The first room covers how Death Stranding came to be. The studio says it shows, for the first time, a book report Kojima wrote in high school, footage from the earliest prototype of the game, and Yoji Shinkawa's original design artwork. Famitsu, at the press preview, singled out the timeline near the entrance, which logs who has visited the studio, and when, over the decade.

A live window into the office

The Death Stranding 2: On the Beach section is built around MADO, the telepresence screen the studio used while it made the sequel through the pandemic, mostly online, including the performance capture with actors at a studio in Los Angeles. For the run of the show, a MADO in the gallery is connected around the clock to the Kojima Productions office. Early concepts for the sequel's ending are on display too; as Famitsu notes, Kojima has said the ending changed because of the pandemic.

Kojima Productions / BEYOND THE STRAND Committee

The last room is what comes next. Famitsu reports costumes from PHYSINT, the action-espionage game the studio announced in 2024, storyboards from the Death Stranding Isolations animated series, and material from OD, its game with Xbox, some of which the press weren't allowed to photograph at the preview. The route ends at a full-size copy of the red door from the OD - KNOCK teaser: stand in the marked spot and it counts as knocking, and a card drops through the gap for you to keep. There are several kinds, and nobody has said what they mean.

At the centre, Death Stranding 2's landscape plays on a 360-degree screen six metres across, ringed by three statues made for the show, and a life-size 10th-anniversary Ludens, the studio's mascot, stands at the entrance. Next to the shop there's a VR tour of the studio's offices, about ten minutes long and narrated by Kenjiro Tsuda, the Japanese voice of Sam (Famitsu says how visitors will get to try it, with crowds expected, is still being decided), and every visitor gets a QR code for a location-based AR delivery game built with Niantic Spatial, played around the streets outside.

Kojima Productions / BEYOND THE STRAND Committee

Tickets and the shop

The first four days, October 31 to November 3, are preview days, entered only with a ticket bundled with goods: ¥5,000 with a tote bag or ¥18,000 with a reissued Kojima Productions goods set. From November 4, tickets are ¥2,600 in advance through Lawson Ticket, Klook and Trip.com, and ¥2,800 on the day through Trip.com or at the door. Two Lawson-only bundles at ¥57,600, 300 of each, add either a signed reproduction of Shinkawa's Ludens artwork or a white Kojima Productions x Seiko Ludens watch. The gallery is open from noon on weekdays and from 10am at weekends and holidays, until 8pm with last entry at 7:30pm, except December 16, when it closes at 5pm.

The shop needs an exhibition ticket to get in. Its clothing is a black BEYOND THE STRAND coach jacket at ¥8,800 and T-shirts at ¥6,600, two printed with Death Stranding 2 concept art of Sam and Higgs and one with the show's logo, next to a suitcase band modelled on Higgs' guitar strap. Around Azabudai Hills, the gallery café serves a Pizza ATAMI seafood pizza from the sequel at ¥2,420, and books ogaki has a free Yoji Shinkawa solo show through November 3.

It's a gallery show rather than a convention booth, and it fits how Kojima has run the company: the timeline of visitors, the live window into the office and the high-school book report put the people and the process on the walls as much as the games. With the Death Stranding series past 27 million players, by the studio's count in June, an A24 live-action film and a Disney+ series announced, and two new games still unreleased, the show doubles as a pitch for the next ten years.