pertaining to Kojima's studio. Starting in 2017, Kojima became a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, often discussing recent film releases, and occasionally drawing comparisons to his own works. Death Stranding was released on November 8, 2019, and received generally positive reviews and was a commercial success. It also won a number of awards, including "Best Game Direction" and "Best Score/Music" at The Game Awards 2019. In November 2019, talking to BBC Newsbeat as part of a documentary about Death Stranding, Kojima said “In the future Kojima Productions will start making films. If you can do one thing well, then you can do everything well”. Kojima went on to explain that he sees that movies, TV shows, and games competing in the same space in the future, thanks to streaming technology, and that this will encourage new formats to emerge. “I’m very interested in the new format of game that will appear on there and that’s what I want to take on,” Kojima added. In June 2022, Kojima and Microsoft revealed that Kojima Productions would be working on a game with Xbox Game Studios that will use Microsoft's cloud-based tech. Norman Reedus, in an interview, also confirmed that development for a sequel to Death Stranding had started. In 2022, Kojima began a podcast for Spotify called Hideo Kojima presents Brain Structure. The podcast, hosted by Kojima with regular appearances from Geoff Keighley, focuses on Kojima's history with game development, as well as his interests in books, music, and cinema. At several game expos in 2022, Kojima has cryptically teased the casting of an upcoming game being developed by Kojima Productions, with Elle Fanning and Shioli Kutsuna confirmed to star. It was unknown whether the game will be related to Death Stranding, the aforementioned Xbox collaboration, or an entirely different project. However, at The Game Awards 2022, Kojima officially revealed the game as the sequel to Death Stranding, with the working title Death Stranding 2. Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux, and Troy Baker will be returning from the titular game, with Elle Fanning and Shioli Kutsuna revealed to be the new cast members of the game. Influences and mentality Kojima has cited Yuji Horii's The Portopia Serial Murder Case (1983) and Shigeru Miyamoto's Super Mario Bros. (1985) as the games that inspired him to enter the video game industry. Portopia Serial Murder Case, a murder mystery adventure game, was an important influence because,