The new president of Konami on Thursday alarmed the entire gaming community, saying that the company, which owns the console brands Metal Gear, Castlevania and Silent Hill, believes that the future belongs to mobile games.
On May 14, an interview with Konami President Hideki Hayakawa appeared on the pages of the Japanese information portal nikkei TRENDYnet, on the same day, excerpts from the interview in English were published on NeoGAF, which caused a very mixed reaction in the West.
There were six quotes that alarmed the industry.
1. “We will seriously take up mobile games“
2. “Our main platform will be mobile devices. Following the “pay-as-you-play” model, which is used in games with additional content, like Power pro and Winning Eleven, our games will move from selling items to selling features.”
3. “We see by the example of these games that even people who buy physical games are motivated to buy additional content. In particular, the success of Power pro prompted us to bring our popular series to the mobile platform.”
4. “In the end, it is the mobile platform that will always be closer to us. Mobile is where the future of gaming is.”
5. “We hope that our projects such as MGSV and Winning Eleven will continue to show good results, but we are constantly thinking about how to promote our franchises in the mobile market as well.”
6. “With multiplatform games, there is no point in dividing the market into categories now. Mobile will assume a new role as a link between the general public and the gaming market.”
To hear such a thing from the president and CEO of a company known primarily for large console titles, of course, seemed strange to Western players.
In the NeoGAF thread, which has accumulated more than 1,000 comments to date, most either said goodbye to Konami or announced her death for them.
At the same time, it was quite possible to expect such an interview from Hideki. Hayakawa, who has been president and CEO of Konami since April 1, 2015, is by no means a new figure in the company. He joined Konami in 1996, and since 2010 he has been responsible for mobile games in it.
And he has something to be proud of: These are Dragon Collection, which has grown into a large franchise in Japan, and Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū, earning at least $1-2 million daily, according to our sources, and the commercially successful Star Wars: Force Collection.
Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū
Against this background, the sales of the company’s console games are strong, but not enough stars from the sky (for example, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes have a million copies each, although the results of the last PES are much better – about 3 million copies) – do not look so promising.
Therefore, Hideki’s desire to take a close look at the mobile market seems quite fair. To him, this market seems less risky (Konami now has three and three games in the Japanese box office Top 100 App Store and Google Play, respectively), less dependent on creative geniuses like Kojima.
So it’s definitely not worth saying goodbye to Konami yet.