NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
Konami’s profits more than double despite Kojima controversy
Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. has lost a lot of goodwill from fans over their mishandling of the departure of Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima, as well as the cancellation of Kojima’s much-anticipated partnership with horror film legend Guillermo del Toro for Silent Hills. Somehow, despite all of its troubles, Konami managed to increase its profits by 147 percent last year.
Konami’s profits rose from ¥3.8 billion ($31.7 million) last year to ¥9.5 billion ($79.1 million) for the fiscal year that ended March 31. The Japanese game maker attributed much of this success to its mobile baseball game, Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyu, which is the latest game in a popular franchise that has been running for over 20 years. Konami released few major titles last year, but it also continued producing gambling and arcade game machines.
“As for computer and video games, we released the latest title in the World Soccer Winning Eleven series, World Soccer Winning Eleven 2015 (known in the U.S. and Europe as Pro Evolution Soccer 2015), and the online payment system on its new game mode, myClub, has performed well,” Konami said in a statement. “Even though we also released other games, including Professional Baseball Spirits 2015, the number of sold titles decreased in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2015, based on a policy of selection and concentration due to diversifying consumer preferences.”
Corporate shenanigans
Konami has still remained silent on Hideo Kojima’s departure from the company, but it had previously made the much publicized decision to remove Kojima’s name from the box art and promotional material on several of his games. This decision outraged many fans, who rallied behind Kojima against what they saw as arbitrary corporate shenanigans.
Konami has not helped their situation since then, first cancelling the much anticipated Silent Hills and then reportedly filing a DMCA takedown notice to remove a fan-made YouTube video that investigated what really happened between the company and Kojima.
Super Bunnyhop, the popular video game YouTube channel that created the video, stated that Konami used the DMCA to censor their work, but because the paperwork was filled out incorrectly, the video has since been reinstated and now has over 225,000 views.
photo credit: MGS 4 Team Photoshoot via photopin (license)
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