Konami saw a future in mobile gaming, and with new CEO Hideki Hayakawa at the helm, Kojima's games were no longer a priority. First there were murmurs of trouble between Konami and its subsidiary, Kojima Productions.
The publisher had restricted the studio's access to corporate assets and made them into contractors rather than full time employees. If that wasn't enough of a death knell, Konami went on to not-so-sneakily remove Hideo Kojima's name from the cover of the then-upcoming Metal Gear Solid 5. This was all part of a shift in "production structure. The signs were there: Kojima had seemingly left Konami and the Metal Gear series behind after he was finished developing The Phantom Pain.
That said, Konami insisted that Kojima was still a Konami employee. Even after an apparent farewell party , Konami pleaded the fifth and said that he was just on a well-deserved vacation after all the built-up fatigue associated with developing the game. We may have believed that if the whole hullabaloo at The Game Awards hadn't happened. Kojima Productions was even nominated for Developer of the Year. However, as host and producer Geoff Keighley told us , Kojima was unable to attend because a legal representative from Konami said that he wasn't allowed to.
Cue the crowd booing the name of Konami, who insisted that he was still an employee until his contract was up in December. Even in the face of all this drama, the fate of Silent Hills was unclear.
Initially, Konami said that they would "continue to develop the Silent Hill series," but it became apparent that this did not include the story teased in P.
We learned of the untimely death of Silent Hills not from Konami or from Kojima, but from Guillermo del Toro and Norman Reedus who both expressed their regret to fans. Because of these statements, Konami, seemingly grudgingly, confirmed to Polygon that "the embryonic Silent Hills project developed with Guillermo del Toro and featuring the likeness of Norman Reedus will not be continued. Once the world found out that P. Despite the horrifying experience and the brutal nature of the game's puzzles, P.
What we didn't know then was that those downloads would be finite. First, Konami warned PlayStation 4 owners that P. Even with this heads up, it turned out that once deleted, P. Players were unable to re-download the game from their libraries despite having a license to the game.
Hold onto your data, because unlike the ghosts in the playable teaser, if you kill P. This, among other things, began to cement public favor firmly against Konami. Kojima and Konami's relationship had started to sour long before P. It was allegedly well known that the higher-ups weren't fans of Kojima.
A theory put forward by YouTuber bobvids and others suggests that Kojima was aware of his impending doom, and so P. According to bobvids, P. Considering the timeline of events, it's likely that Kojima knew he wasn't going to be able to complete Silent Hills.
He released P. Throughout the game there are little references to Kojima's departure. That talking fetus? Silent Hills before it could be fully realized. The father who killed his family? Konami axing Kojima Productions. Kojima is weird, but undeniably wily, so we honestly wouldn't put it past him to develop such a convoluted way to give Konami the middle finger.
Silent Hill is one of the most enduring horror game franchises ever. If Konami is looking to make money, it would follow that they should embrace some of their best known games and pump out some remakes and new titles, right? Not so. Konami is double, tripling down on a " mobile first " strategy. Not for lack of trying. Metal Gear fans may have noticed that MGS5 featured microtransactions out the wazoo. Kojima had apparently abhorred strategies like these implemented to milk a little more money out of players.
Unless Konami is going to make a mobile Silent Hills or a console game riddled with microtransactions, we're unlikely to see a Silent Hill game , as Kojima imagined it, for a while. Help us, Phil Spencer, you're our only hope! Despite rumors saying otherwise, Microsoft will not be picking up Silent Hills where Konami left off. Besides the fact that Konami has said that it will make Silent Hill games eventually , Kojima had much closer ties with Sony than Microsoft, as was proven when they gave him all the assets and encouragement needed to produce a game as weird and wonderful as Death Stranding.
This rumor spawned from an anonymous source that told Rooster Teeth that Silent Hills was very nearly complete, and considering this, Microsoft moved to purchase the property for billions.
Remember when P. That was Sony playing nice with Microsoft, because Silent Hills was on the way to becoming an Xbox exclusive. Phil Spencer himself in a tweet said that this rumor was utterly unfounded. It was nice to dream for a moment that we might've seen Silent Hills as early as Spring , but like we said, it was only a dream. Hideo Kojima has a considerable pool of celebrity friends. He likes to cast them in his games, too, which we imagine isn't the cheapest of habits.
Death Stranding is set to feature famous faces like Mads Mikkelsen and Norman Reedus rendered in stunning detail. We have an inkling that Konami may have thought that Kojima games were getting too expensive. According to a translated interview with Metal Gear Solid composer Rika Muranaka , Kojima didn't have a very strong business sense. Because he had a salary rather than a share in the profits, he wasn't very concerned with how much money his games made, just that they were as detailed as possible.
Kojima refused to cut corners to save money. Foliage shading? That needs to be top notch. Obviously, it was intended to grow and blossom as the studio did the same. But that was before Konami decided to focus on mobile games , allegedly put Kojima on contract, and generally give console gaming the finger. Here are some pictures of the ceremony from Ricky Zhang, who still calls himself 'the lead character artist at Kojima Productions Los Angeles' on his blog.
I'm pretty sure that Kojima behind the tree. Although conspiracy theorists might have a field day when they realise Ricky took three pictures and you can't see Kojima's head clearly in any of them. We had cherry blossom for Tree-planting.
We signed on the shovel. And, for the time being, it's a little bit of Kojima that Konami hasn't quite removed just yet I'm currently GamesRadar's guides coordinator, which means I've had a hand in producing or writing all of the guide and tips content on the site.
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