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Konami Explains ‘Mobile First’ While Still Being Mobile First

By Daniel George

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P.T. is gone. Silent Hills is dead. Perhaps gaming’s only true auteur, Hideo Kojima, is likely departing from his position once Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is released. Konami is no longer listed publicly on the New York Stock Exchange. The once prolific Japanese gaming company has gone through a bevy of rapid changes over the past six weeks, all skewing towards a notion that Konami’s future lies in mobile gaming, or that they were “mobile first.” PR representatives for the company have since refuted that notion, however, as made clear specifically to outlets including IGN.

Honestly, the piece is mostly roundabout statements that barely come to any conclusions. The main point from Konami is that their corporate focus “is to continue to build up a comprehensive portfolio of console, arcade, and card game titles for each IP while also making the best possible use of the mobile devices that accompany our customers in their daily life, thus expanding the limits of entertainment and appealing to more and more customers.” They claim that “Mobile First” pertains to Japan, where smartphones contain a 50% market saturation, which is much higher than in other markets such as the USA or China.

Konami addresses the fact that they portrayed a negative conjecture when undergoing all these transformations and project cancelations in such a short time, but overall their actions speak louder than the promise of their words.

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You say the Metal Gear and Silent Hill series’ “are also extremely important to Konami,” yet why is a sure-fire hit in Silent Hills canceled? You have the star power of Guillermo del Toro and Norman Reedus alongside the mastermind of Hideo Kojima all agreeing to work on this project, so why are you “not currently at a stage where you can announce the path these future titles will take?” If you truly apologize for the way you portrayed your status as a company due to your extreme actions, then why not address the Hideo Kojima situation? His name isn’t even brought up by Konami in this statement; you’d have to find the one over at Polygon just for even an official brief mention.

So much of what Konami has to say is little ado about something. What they had to say is something that would convince their non-mobile fans that console and PC gaming actually remains an integral part of the company. Instead, what we received was the dangling of hope of a statement that insists we must believe what Konami is saying; that everything is mostly business as usual. Unfortunately, due to their sharp, sudden turn away from their current console gaming projects (and the creators behind them), it’s really difficult to take Konami at their word.

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