Beyond The Strand was Kojima Productions' tenth-anniversary event, held on 23 September 2025 at TOHO Cinemas Roppongi Hills in Japan. The studio was founded in Tokyo on 16 December 2015. For PHYSINT, the event was the first and so far the only occasion on which any visual material from the game has been shown publicly. This page covers the PHYSINT segment only.
The studio's own recap lists PHYSINT as the fifth of eight announcements made that day. It describes the segment as an update on its latest action espionage game currently in development, and records that visual art and information on three actors were released. The three actors are named there as Charlee Fraser, Ma Dong-Seok and Minami Hamabe.
The first poster
The key visual shown on stage was the first PHYSINT art of any kind to be released. It carries the game's logo and the tagline "Here comes the feeling". Kojima confirmed on stage that the figure it shows is the game's main character, and that the character's face is not shown. As of 2026-09-12, no name, role, or other detail about that character has been released, and no cast member has been publicly attached to it.
The casting announcements
Three casting announcement videos premiered during the event, one each for Charlee Fraser, Ma Dong-seok and Minami Hamabe. Each is short, each has the actor congratulating the studio on its anniversary and giving thoughts on being cast, and none of them discloses a character name or role. Full detail is on Cast.
The 3D scan
The studio also showed a 3D-scanned model of Minami Hamabe. It was presented as output in the game engine, with the model itself described as still in development and not yet complete. The engine that produced it was not named, and Kojima framed it as a yet-to-be-revealed engine. This still is the only technology material PHYSINT has ever shown, and it is a character model rather than an environment, a scene, or anything running as a game.
What Kojima said on stage
Two statements from the segment are worth recording precisely, because both are about status rather than content. Kojima emphasised that development on the project was still early, and said that he was still casting its actors. Separately, he framed the studio's order of work.
For me, working with people I like helps me live longer, because I can go to work and say, "I want to meet them". We need to experiment with technology, and there's so much more to do, but before that, I need to make OD.
That remark is about sequencing at the studio, not about PHYSINT's design. More of his statements are collected on Hideo Kojima on PHYSINT.
What was not shown
Surface | Status at the event, and as of 2026-09-12 |
|---|---|
Gameplay footage | None shown. None has been shown for PHYSINT at any point since the announcement in January 2024 |
Environments or in-engine scenes | None shown. The only technology material was the character model still |
Platform | Not stated |
Release date or window | Not stated |
Premise, setting or plot | Not described |
Character names or roles | Not disclosed |
Engine name | Not revealed |
Store listing or pre-order | None opened, then or since |
Also presented at the event
The other seven announcements that day covered separate Kojima Productions projects, film and television work, and brand collaborations. None of them concerns PHYSINT, and nothing announced in those segments describes it.
Archive
A full recording of the event is publicly available in English and Japanese versions, each running a little over two and a half hours. The PHYSINT material is a single segment within it. The five assets released that day are items four to eight in the inventory on Media and Assets.