Does anyone know why Konami made this sudden shift back into outputting games again?

[CaptainToad]

Did they start losing money on the gambling side? Did they get a new CEO who's more into the game side?

 

[Jayonnaise6105 Jayonnaise6105]

I don't know

My best guess would be that if all their gambling income relied on physical machines that people had to visit, then maybe COVID hit them pretty hard financially?
Like, maybe it took 4-5 years to remaster MGS 3, Silent Hill 2 and develop Silent Hill f and they only put those into production after COVID happened?

 

[Frickinfrik]

Guess they finally realized gambling is for losers who don’t value money. And because everyone hated what Konami was doing. Maybe idk. They might start some shit again.

 

[bjork]

They never stopped making games. They may have not been as visible in the outside of Japan, but they just had (and have) a large presence in mobile there instead of working on the console side of things. They also still support arcades too, you can see a list of their releases on wikipedia.

 

[classifiedobsolete]

COVID hit the health clubs and pachinko parlors pretty hard

 

[gwardojones]

I read in multiple articles that not long after Konami decided to focus more on the gambling and mobile sides of their business, the Japanese government passed restrictions on gambling. It's been awhile, but I believe it was either a restriction on the number of pachinko parlors, or it was a limitation on how many machines a single company could put into a single pachinko parlor, with the result being that it hampered a lot of pachinko developers and lowered their profit. I think COVID dealt a crucial blow that forced Konami to reconsider their strategy. Something to that effect.

 

[CaptainToad]

They never stopped making games. They may have not been as visible in the outside of Japan, but they just had (and have) a large presence in mobile there instead of working on the console side of things. They also still support arcades too, you can see a list of their releases on wikipedia.

Yeah, I looked at their releases on Wikipedia and in the PS3-forward era their releases tanked to a dribble with them mostly releasing sports games or sequels during that time or cheaply farming out games to 3rd parties like Silent Hill. Like half of their PS4 output is Pro Yakyuu or PES games.

 

[nyka]

I feel like they saw how success full re7 and the REmakes were and realized that they were potentially leaving money on the table.

 

[LiberoVulpesLiberoVulpes's icon]

Pachinko ain't giving moolah.

 

[Matricks]

AI goog said their main buzz income is coming from Software sales, hence theres money for the remakes by western devs.
Konamis collections are atill poppy so they will stay awhile, but yeah hideokojima IP let them milking till last drop.

 

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

I think a lot of it has to do with the culture at Konami.

Management there has always been a little bull-headed anyway which is why we had that whole "fuck konami" thing for so long.

I think they were suppoer cautious about getting back into games and only did it because of tighter gambling regs in Japan coming in and hitting their bottom line.

It started, imo, when they first ported a bunch of their stuff to PC a couple of years back. Castlevania/Contra collections and SH4 on GoG was then dipping their toes back in and when it worked they were more ready to greenlight full new projects.

Dunno how true it is but ive heard that Bloober spent years pitching SH games to Konami before they got approval for the remake of 2.

 

[nyka]

AI goog said their main buzz income is coming from Software sales, hence theres money for the remakes by western devs.
Konamis collections are atill poppy so they will stay awhile, but yeah hideokojima IP let them milking till last drop.

can you please not import google ai slop into the chat? Think for yourself, damn

 

[ScriptorFaust]

Good question. I remember exploding with happiness when I saw the announcement for Suikoden Remaster and couldn't help myself but question their intentions. Then again, I really hope they made enough money of those to also release Suikoden III, since I was never able to play it on console. Maybe some of them hit their midlife crisis and did what many do: repeat the past and revel in nostalgia, which would naturally lead to making games again.

 

[qw90700]

I was not in Konami shareholders meetings lol so I wouldn't know but I can make an educated guess:

PC gaming was relatively "not so popular in Japan" until like few years ago. That's partly why Japanese companies started to care PC gaming exist and even $ony started to release their games on PC. From Japanese company POV PC gaming became an aspect of the industry that "it would be stupid to ignore". So they realized when they may fail in Japan they can at least sell internationally via PC platform.

However the new "remake era" is probably the prime reason. Square Enix and especially CAPCOM made Japan started to see they can still make lots of money from remakes. This was probably why Konami wanted to use their best selling games to remake them for quick money when remakes and these games are still popular even on PC platform.

However there is another thing about Konami, for example horror stories were always popular in Japan, especially among school kids. There are tons of horror shit from "ghost in public toilet" to "some random woman cut your face while you walk on street". However this horror/gore popularity was decreased for a while and it seems it got popular again. It made Konami use horror to sell again especially considering Resident Evil still can be popular. So they seem to use ancient horror game ideas with mix of Silent Hill to play on the popularity of horror again. So when the situation is like this I do think Konami made a right decision to spam Silent Hill games by killing the identity of the series especially when most people who enjoyed playing Silent Hill back in the day either died or they have no care about existence of video games anymore, so it makes things easy to spam remakes and reboot shits without risking huge fan backlash.

 

[Rocket2049]

konami brought good stuff out recently? i just see retro collections and remasters
last konami game i remember is Contra operation galuga ...and that games sucks
i got gradius origins to play Salamander 3 which is a new game entirely on that collection
vampire survivors did better with konami stuff than they did, contra dlc was fun, and the castlevania dlc was bigger than the whole game!
i can't think of any notable konami games, they still make rhythm/dance games?

 

[Jayonnaise6105 Jayonnaise6105]

konami brought good stuff out recently? i just see retro collections and remasters

They did publish Super Crazy Rhythm Castle in 2023. It was at least my favourite new Konami game in a while

 

[Dany28]

Konami's situation is not good.They have to start to get back on track slowly otherwise it will soon be over with them.

 

[Rocket2049]

They did publish Super Crazy Rhythm Castle in 2023. It was at least my favourite new Konami game in a while
View attachment 114923

that was a KONAMI game? i found it incredibly frustrating especially with co-op where every stage got much harder (more than it should for 2 players) but i still couldn't 100% it either, those stars or ranks or whatever were hard to get, too many annoying things.
and that unskippable story stuff on replaying a stage did NOT help at all.

 

[Jayonnaise6105 Jayonnaise6105]

that was a KONAMI game? i found it incredibly frustrating especially with co-op where every stage got much harder (more than it should for 2 players) but i still couldn't 100% it either, those stars or ranks or whatever were hard to get, too many annoying things.
and that unskippable story stuff on replaying a stage did NOT help at all.

They didn't develop it, but they did publish it. So I count it as a Konami game anyway I agree that it feels designed for 4 players. Especially the later stages. It doesn't scale difficulty based on number of players, which can be frustrating. I haven't finished it, but I still found it to be a lot of fun

 

[kuroninneko]

For the longest time it was like they only made their soccer/football game. I think part of it might be lots of their developers left like Kojima did because of an unfair work environment. Sad because in the PSX days they were doing great. Great games in many genres. I hope they do make a comback and start making proper Castlevania games again

Post automatically merged: 54 minutes ago

Ironically I just now found this advertisement while reading old issues of Game Developer magazine

 

[bjork]

Yeah, I looked at their releases on Wikipedia and in the PS3-forward era their releases tanked to a dribble with them mostly releasing sports games or sequels during that time or cheaply farming out games to 3rd parties like Silent Hill. Like half of their PS4 output is Pro Yakyuu or PES games.

It still doesn't align with this notion that they suddenly reappeared on the scene, though. They were just busy making or supporting franchises that are safer bets and less sexy than a metal gear or whatever.

 

[dropsmegamega]

they were too busy eliminating all the Kojima supporters that remained inside

 

[qw90700]

they were too busy eliminating all the Kojima supporters that remained inside

Let's remember how they had to clean up FOX - FOXHOUND - Militaires Sans Frontières - Outer Heaven during the "Konami Internal Structure Wars" (KISW) between 198X - 202X lolol.

 

[Moreno909]

Game industry nowadays make a lot of money. Would be stupid to ignore