Hideo Kojima To Depart Konami; Metal Gear Franchise Changing Hands

An anonymous reader writes: Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima is set to leave the video game publisher Konami, ending 29 years of service. Konami had announced a restructuring earlier this year, and observant fans recently noticed the removal of references to Kojima Productions from the company's web site. A source speaking to Gamespot states that both developments are the result of a "power struggle" between the studio and its parent. Konami has now confirmed to the English-speaking press that Kojima will work on The Phantom Pain until it is completed, but they are searching for new staff to take over the Metal Gear series. Kojima's only other announced project was Silent Hills, a horror game created in collaboration with Guillermo del Toro.

Metal Gear

[Anonymous Coward]

Metal Gear... It can't be!

Re:Metal Gear

[e r]

Kojima? Kojima?! Kojimaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!

Re:Metal Gear

[Chris Mattern]

There's only two good reasons to like Tomb Raider.

Re:

[rsilvergun]

Challenging game play and good level design?

Re:

[Coren22]

Or Payday 2; stealth bank robberies. When you succeed in a steal bank heist, there is no better feeling as so much work goes into a successful heist.

Re:

[newcastlejon]

Skip Thief 3 and play the new one. Terry Pratchett's daughter was involved in designing the city and it shows: you almost feel like you might be sneaking round Ankh Morpork at times.

I have a great idea!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Maybe they can get EA to take over stewardship of the franchise! Those guys sure know how to nourish and cherish a beloved series, don't they?

Working as a contractor.

[HalAtWork]

It would seem like he'll be working as a contractor, still involved with his current projects. Presumably the deals in place with Silent Hills and MGSV will continue, but after that, who knows. There's a nice breakdown here [gematsu.com] and here [twinstiq.com].

Re:

[Coren22]

Monosodium glutamate? We're talking about MGS here, not MSG.

Konami auditioning for project leader on next MGS

[HalAtWork]

Konami's saying that they still intend to develop future titles, but a press release states that they are auditioning for project leaders [twinstiq.com], casting doubt on Kojima's future involvement and lending creedence to the allegations from GameSpot's unnamed source.

Re:

[CronoCloud]

Much like how Sony mistreated the guy who developed the original Playstation.

Ken Kuturagi, who was batshit insane in his design decisions. Developers complained about the arcane architecture of the PS2 and then he made something even MORE arcane.

Sure they're both extremely powerful for their time in certain ways, but Kuturagi forgot that developers are lazy, especially X86 devs and that they would be unwilling to take the extra measures for the most part.

Re:Bad move by Konami

[UnknownSoldier]

Having shipped a few PS2 games, and helped numerous PS3 devs, the situation is a little more complicated then that.

The PS2 had *blazing* fast VRAM bltblt copies. Yes, the cpus (EE, SPU, IOP, VU0, VU1) were a complete bitch to write for, but it was a beautiful site to behind when everything was working.

While the PS2 had a completely broken Z-Test (who the hell QA'd this??), it was ahead of its time. It predicted multi-core architecture that (game) devs had to embrace sooner or later. The Xbox with its unified memory definitely made things WAY easier then the complicated PS2.

The PS3 with its 6 SPU's of only 128KB each (!) forced developers to break the game up into "small jobs". It highlighted the problems of C++ OOP -- that it doesn't scale, and that you NEED to use DOD (Data Orientated Design) in order to achieve high performance. So while the PS2 and PS3 were "batshit insane" it had unintended benefit -- help move developers to embrace the "multi-core DOD" future.

On Xbox developers were typically CPU bound, while on PS3 developers were typically GPU bound.

The problem with the success of PS2 and failure of the PS3 was that Sony forgot what business they were in!? They were NOT a hardware manufacturer, but an entertainment company. It cost them 4 years of being in the red with the PS3 to remember this fact.

Sony moving to x86 for the PS4 allowed them to use "commodity" parts & pricing. Make things _easy_ for the developer and you'll get more/better games, or at least that was their justification.

So while I agree that yes x86 game devs tend to be lazy compared to console devs, the x86 guys had a valid point:

* Why is the hardware SO complicated?

The battle between fast & rigid and slow & flexible is never an easy one to answer.

Re:

[UnknownSoldier]

Clarifications / Fix typos:

Sight, not site
* was a beautiful sight

Games, not developers:
* On Xbox games were typically CPU bound, while on PS3 games were typically GPU bound.

SCE (Sony Computer Entertainment), not Sony
* SCE forgot what business they were in!? They were NOT a hardware manufacturer, but an entertainment company. It cost them 4 years of being in the red

Sony makes the most from insurance. Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) owns

* SCEA (America)
* SCEE (Europe)
* SCEJ (Japan)

Re:

[mattack2]

While the PS2 had a completely broken Z-Test

What is this referring to?

Is it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z... [wikipedia.org] ??

If so, can you give a real world example of this being used in a game?

Re:

[UnknownSoldier]

It is a graphics term, the Depth Buffer Test, is commonly abbreviated Z-Test by us graphics guys.

On the PS2's GS (Graphics Synthesizer) the z test can be set to a few of the normal 8 values:

NEVER, ALWAYS, LESS, LEQUAL, EQUAL, GREATER, GEQUAL, NOTEQUAL

One of the tests, LESS_THEN_EQUAL, IIRC, was completely broken. The reality was that you had to reverse the test and work-around it. Not a HUGE problem, but still, a sign of SCEI making custom hardware and not fully testing it. (i.e. The memory cards on the P

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

This happens at every IT company eventually; the management gets rid of their best paid talents and try to squeeze a few more hits out with junior team at minimum salary. And then they get out with their fat bonuses just before company collapses.

Me

[xombo]

I'll do it.

Good Riddance

[TheNinjaroach]

Metal Gear is a great game, but after playing through most of the series all I can say is "good riddance." Hideo seems rather arrogant and self-indulgent, his ego leaves too big of an imprint on the game and tarnishes its quality. Getting rid of him is no guarantee it will get better, but at least there's a chance.

Re:Good Riddance

[tudsworth]

Kojima's been trying to break away from the Metal Gear series for a while now, to be fair. His other notable works; Snatcher/Policenauts, Boktai and Zone of the Enders are all fantastic games; and his ego or arrogance never really imprints them -that- much... or it fits in better with the more fantastical settings of those games.

As for the Metal Gear series getting any better, I don't think I trust Konami circa 2015 to do the franchise justice. Castlevania's name is forever tarnished by subpar God of War clones; Pro Evo Soccer has been floundering about in some attempt to copy FIFA, forgetting all about the more arcade-styled gameplay that set the series apart to begin with; Gradius, Contra, BomberMan (yep, they own that now!) and more franchises than I can remember are essentially dead to them; and the franchises they do still make games for just aren't making them any money due to a complete lack of advertising or just being shoddy products in general.

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[mattack2]

Ooh, which ones are the God of War clones?

Re:

[tudsworth]

The Lords of Shadow sub-series for PS3 and XBox 360. It's kind of disingenuous of me to refer to them as a "clone" of a more popular game - but they're third-person action games in the same vein as God of War, with a very similar emphasis on being "cinematic" - whatever that means. The combat's the usual "mash light attack until a symbol pops over their head and use a QTE to execute them" fare you'd expect from God of War and its ilk; and the games have absolutely nothing in common with the exploration-base

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[tudsworth]

I feel like "arcadey" was probably the worst way I could have put "the gameplay was considerably better than FIFA's", and I'm glad somebody's come along to correct that. I'm not much of a fan of football as a real sport, but have, until the more recent attempts to copy... whatever it is FIFA's trying to do (which started around about the Xbox 360 and PS3 era, I believe) always considered PES the more enjoyable of the two to play.

Of course, the power of licenses outdoes quality for the majority of people,