Death Stranding connects to Xbox for 5th birthday

Kojima Productions made a surprise announcement Thursday that Death Stranding Director’s Cut is now available on Xbox Series X/S, as well as Windows PC, just one day ahead of the game’s five-year anniversary.

“It is my pleasure to finally announce that Death Stranding Director’s Cut will be delivered to Xbox players. I would like to thank all the fans who have stayed connected with us as well as everyone in the Xbox community who have been patiently waiting,” Kojima told press (as reported by IGN).”Kojima Productions (Death Stranding) will continue to connect more and more players around the world, so please stay tuned.”

Death Stranding was originally a PlayStation 4 exclusive in 2019 before Death Stranding Director’s Cut was released on PC and PlayStation 5. Since then it’s also been ported to Apple devices on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. It’ll also be available on Amazon Luna starting Thursday, which means Prime subscribers can play it for free for one month starting on December 1.

This is the first step in a continued Xbox and Kojima Productions collaboration. One of the company’s next games, called OD, is being published by Xbox Game Studios. Despite this, the studio still has a good relationship with Sony and PlayStation. Kojima made an appearance during Sony’s January State of Play to announce that he’s working with Sony Interactive Entertainment on the mysterious stealth game Physint.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is currently only announced for a PlayStation 5 release in 2025, but in a subsequent announcement, it was revealted that Kojima Productions has gotten the full IP rights for Death Stranding back from 505 Games. It’s been five years since release, so it’s possible that the rights just reverted back to the original developer. That does mean the sequel could potentially come to other platforms. Now all we need is a Death Stranding Director’s Cut release on the Switch 2, and you can play the absurd and obtuse social connections game just about anywhere.