Hideo Kojima recently announced his departure from Konami, and this has upset many gamers – and the implications from his leaving are actually quite serious, perhaps more than most gamers realize immediately. For example, “Silent Hills” might now not ever come out on the market, as current rumors claim that the game has been cancelled. We don’t know whether or not this is true officially, but it could very well be – if Kojima takes the Fox Engine with him, this will effectively kill the development of the title.
It’s actually a tricky situation, and there has allegedly been an internal dispute because of it. On one hand, Konami own the rights to the “Silent Hill” franchise and subsequently to the latest installment, “Silent Hills”, so Kojima can’t stop them from working on the game if they wanted to. However, Kojima is the one behind the Fox Engine, and if he doesn’t want to continue sharing the technology with Konami, there’s not much the studio could do.
Sure, they can theoretically restart the game’s development from scratch, using a new engine – but realistically, this would take years to complete and it will also be a very risky venture. In the meantime, Kojima himself could come up with something that steals the “Silent Hill” fanbase as well, as many of the people who love the franchise are primarily interested in it due to Kojima’s contributions.
These rumors are very strange in the context of other reports allegedly coming from within Konami, which paint a completely different picture. Some are claiming that Kojima is actually leaving on very amicable terms, and has encouraged the developers to make the game the best they could, in order to give the fans something good.
That certainly sounds like something he would say, and right now there is a lot of confusion over whether or not “Silent Hills” really has been cancelled. Until Kojima or someone from Konami comes out with a statement about the game, we won’t really know – but it’s worth noting that with such a large fanbase, the studio should not keep quiet. A lot of people are expecting them to say something right now, and it would be disappointing if they waited until the last moment to actually say the game isn’t happening.
For what it’s worth, Konami have already started taking down the Kojima Productions logo from official art for “Metal Gear”, and Kojima is no longer officially on the company’s executive team. Whatever is going on behind the studio’s doors, that much is clear – Kojima really is leaving and this is about to bring some serious changes to the way Konami’s products are developed and marketed.