I can’t say this is much of a surprise but it doesn’t hurt any less. Voice actor Otsuka Aiko, who voices both Snake and Big Boss, stated that “[Kojima Productions] has been disbanded. It appears that the work that the team has been putting their utmost effort into is nearly complete.”. He goes on to compliment the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V and touted the game as the team’s “greatest masterpiece”.
None of this is too shocking if, like us, you’ve been following the Konami/Kojima soap opera. Kojima and other senior staff were heavily restricted to company email and were signed to contracts instead of being labeled full time employees earlier this year. Then Konami began to silently erase the Kojima name on everything currently Metal Gear related including websites and game titles. Eventually the cancellation of Silents Hills, and removal of its teaser PT, all but confirmed that Konami and Kojima’s future were at a clear end. Now it seems anyone and anything Kojima was working with is just being excised from Konami.
This does make some sense if Konami wants to refocus their development only on mobile and pachinko games. You don’t need a full development studio to make iOS and Android apps. But to watch it all wither away instead of being appropriated to another publisher or developer is a pretty big shame. Hopefully Konami can come to their senses and at least do the video game world a favor and let go of some of those long standing, beloved, IPs.
