Konami Focuses Its Shift To Mobile Devices; Company CEO States That They Are The Future Of Gaming

An image from the upcoming "Metal Gear Solid 5," possibly the last Konami game from Hideo Kojima. Konami

It seems as though Konami has been making a number of controversial decisions lately and now they may have just made another one. The gaming company responsible for making such powerhouse game series as “Metal Gear Solid” and “Silent Hill” has decided to focus its attention on mobile gaming, where the future of gaming lies, according to Konami CEO Hideki Hayakawa.

The statement was made through a lengthy Japanese interview on Nikkei Trendy Net, but was soon translated to English by a user from NeoGaf. Apparently, Konami plans to aggressively pursue mobile games and eventually make mobile platforms the main platform for the company.

This move comes at an interesting time: Earlier this week, Square Enix made a similar announcement, since that company has also decided to refocus on mobile games rather than the competitive world of console gaming. One main difference, however, is that Square Enix has already proven itself as a force in mobile gaming with titles like “Final Fantasy Record Keeper” doing very well in sales, whereas there have only been a few Konami mobile games.

Still, that doesn’t seem to deter Konami since the company has stated that its games will follow the pay-as-you-play model of mobile gaming that some of their mobile games, like “Power Pro” and “Winning Eleven,” have followed. According to Polygon, the success of “Power Pro” in particular, will lead Konami to bring some of its bigger game franchises to tablet screens in the near future.

As mentioned earlier, this seems to be another controversial decision made by the popular game company, one of the bigger ones being Hideo Kojima’s leaving Konami. While the popular developer will still work on “Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain,” his departure has lead to the cancellation of “Silent Hills,” which would have been a collaboration between Kojima and acclaimed horror director Guillermo del Toro.

Konami had also removed the “Silent Hills” playable teaser “P.T.” Despite technically being a teaser demo for the now canceled “Silent Hills,” “P.T” was praised for being a legitimately scary horror game. What made this Konami controversy infamous was the fact that players who had previously downloaded the game could no longer re-download it after deleting it.

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