Rumour: Konami Shenanigans – Are the Metal Gear Solid & Silent Hill series dead?
It’s that time again, it’s time for some Konami Shenanigans and as you already suspect, it’s not for the better, as the future of our beloved franchises are looking bleaker than ever before. Now most of this news is rumour at this time, but as that old saying goes “there’s no smoke without fire.”
Reports are coming from a French gaming site called Gameblog that Konami has ceased all their triple-A console titles, all apart from Pro Evolution Soccer. So that means franchises such as Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill and even Castlevania could be in serious trouble.
To make matters even worse, Konami’s worldwide technology director Julien Merceron has left the company. Merceron was also the overseer of the Fox Engine, which of course was created by Hideo Kojima’s development team Kojima Productions (and we all know of their recent struggles with Konami). Gameblog say that Merceron parted ways with the company as he was “unhappy with Konami’s transition away from the console market towards mobile games.” According to Eurogamer, they believe both reports to be true.
Now this all could very well be pure speculation, but I revert back to that old saying “there’s no smoke without fire” and if you want a hint of ever-so-slight optimism, back in April Konami did say that they “will continue to develop the Silent Hill series”, and they have said something similar in regards to Metal Gear Solid (without Kojima), so hopefully the same would apply to Castlevania. However, if any of you have seen that horrid Silent Hill 2 fruit machine, Konami might have the intentions of violating our beloved franchises.
Yet, when a fan apparently contacted the Konami customer service, he got an unexpected response. Now I would take this with a huge pinch of salt, because I believe if Konami were to say something official, I doubt they’d announce it in such a way. Regardless here is what was apparently said by Konami in response to the fan:
“I know some blogs were claiming that online this morning, but I’m not really sure where they’d be getting that from.
“We’re still definitely working on console games and franchises such as Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Castlevania, PES and all the rest.
“Those teams are definitely working on designing and programming great games.
Though as a colleague pointed out to me, perhaps Konami might not develop certain games in-house and they could lease them out to other studios? Though I wouldn’t hold your breath. Watch the abomination trailer below and see if your blood doesn’t boil, now what’s the Konami related hashtag that I’ve seen trending lately?