By: Abi Khan
As some of you may know, the huge gaming company Konami has apparently ceased production on all of its console titles in the wake of the (relatively) disappointing release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Following a very troubled year in which the company faced multiple controversies and cancelled projects, including the highly anticipated collaboration between Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro Silent Hill as well as reports that its staff is being forced to work in an Orwellian dystopia, Konami will (according to sources) no longer develop any console titles with the exception of the moderately successful (and rather cheap to produce) PES series. If you’re worried about their iGaming division, though, don’t – their numerous online slots are going stronger than ever, and it was recently announced that they would be partnering with Spin Games in order to bring their slots to various online casinos.
You might have heard about Konami – they’re a company that can be only defined as an industry giant, with fingers in all sorts of pies. Founded in 1969 as a jukebox repair business, in only a few years they had refocused their efforts to developing arcade games, with the 80s bringing them tremendous success with arcade hits such as Frogger and Scramble. With the release of the NES (which, for those of you not quite familiar with your gaming history, is probably the most important system ever made, selling over 60 million units and single-handedly pulling out the industry from a crash) Konami found even greater success, creating hit after hit after hit – Contra, Castlevania, Metal Gear, Gradius and many, many more – all of which are names that are still relevant to this day. It seemed that Konami had found its place in the world.
As the 80s came to an end and the 90s rolled in, Konami managed to not only find new success on the PlayStation, but also surpass their achievements on the NES – Castlevania: Symphony of the Night managed to revitalize the decaying Castlevania series, forging its course for the next 10 years and helping to solidify the “Metroidvania” genre, which is popular even today; Metal Gear Solid proved once and for all that games could tell a deep, compelling story, and the high quality of its writing and voice acting set course for gaming in general, and Silent Hill is still one of the most recognizable names in the horror genre overall, not just in games. Once you reach the top you can only fall down, and fall they did.
While Konami did enjoy tremendous success during the early-to-mid 2000s, with sequels to its three main franchises (the aforementioned Castlevania, Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill) selling millions and being very well received by both critics and fans, in 2005 Konami decided to disband Team Silent, the development team behind the Silent Hill series, citing the poor sales of Silent Hill 4: The Room as the reason. Since then, the series has been handed to a myriad of developers, with mostly unremarkable results. A year later, in late 2006, a Konami decided to enter the pachinko market, using its knowledge of arcade machines to its advantage. Pachinko are a form of pinball machine that are basically the Japanese equivalent of the slot machine – as gambling is illegal in Japan, pachinko machines are about as close as Japanese gamers can get to playing slots. Naturally, soon afterwards the company decided to create some actual video slots which would be exported overseas. They were successful. Like, VERY successful.
All of a sudden, Konami realized that slots and pachinko machines are actually really, really easy and cheap to make, and they bring in a whole lot of money. As such, almost all of their franchises slowly disappeared from view. Contra hasn’t been heard from since 2007’s Contra 4 – which was a portable title. Meanwhile, the Castlevania series was taken from the hands of Koji Igarashi, the man who facilitated its modern success almost single-handedly, and given to an obscure Spanish studio in order to be rebooted into Castlevania: Lords of Shadow which, while well-received by critics, was highly disliked by most fans of the franchise, causing its sequel to heavily underperform. Only Metal Gear has been going strong, in no small part thanks to its creator Hideo Kojima’s efforts to make the best game he can make, budget be damned. This resulted in the latest game in the series, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain to have a development budget of over $80 million – and considering the fact that the game has made appearances in every major gaming convention in the last few years, we can safely assume that the marketing budget is even bigger than that. The ever increasing budget, the constant delays (MGSV was 7 years in development, which is a lot for an industry that’s less than 50 years old as a whole), caused Hideo Kojima to be fired from the company earlier this year, which also resulted in the cancellation of Silent Hills – the highly anticipated revival of the Silent Hill franchise.
But hey, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is getting great reviews, right? Well, unfortunately, while reviews are important, they’re not everything. Players have been very divisive when it comes to the game, with a lot of them expressing their disappointment over the lackluster story and the lack of proper conclusion. Most likely rushed by the departure of Kojima and all the scandals surrounding it, about 15 out of the game’s 50 missions are simply rehashes of previous ones with increased difficulty, and about 80% of all missions are not essential to the story, which – considering the fact that Metal Gear is a series that pioneered Hollywood-style storytelling in games – left people hoping for more. It also didn’t sell very well, which is pretty much the only thing that Konami cares about at this point. Considering Kojima’s departure and the low sales, a sequel is extremely unlikely – what we’re most likely to see in the near future is a Metal Gear slot, in the vein of the Silent Hill slot that was announced recently.
So, what does this all mean for Konami? Nothing good if you, like me, are a gamer who grew up with Metal Gear, Castlevania and Silent Hill. By all accounts, these series are going to be canceled at best and turned into Japan-only mobile titles at worst. But there’s plenty of hope for gamblers – as Konami is shifting its focus from traditional gaming to iGaming, they will be able to allocate more of their resources (budget and development team) to them. My prognosis, and it is one shared by quite a lot of people, is that in the near future (2017-2018) we’re going to see an increased Konami presence in various online casinos. We know for a fact that licensed slots are way more popular than non-licensed ones, and with the star power of Konami’s greatest franchises behind them, it’s only a matter of time before you’re able to play a Metal Gear slot from your browser. Is that what gamers want? No, it isn’t. But at least it’s good to see that the legacy of these great series will survive in some form.
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