We all knew it was coming. There were plenty of rumors floating around about the legendary developers status at the company, but on October 9th Hideo Kojima left the studio he had worked at for almost 30 years for the last time.
In a writeup by The New Yorker, and insider at the company was in attendance at a going away ceremony for the legend. He said that the overall air of the event was “a rather cheerful but also emotional goodbye.”. He went on to mention the Konami’s President Hideki Hayakawa and it’s CEO Sadaaki Kaneyoshi were not in attendance. Not really a surprise is it?
The article goes on to talk about WHY Konami is doing what it’s doing. Nothing knew if you’re an avid gamer, but the long and the short of it is this: Mobile games are cheap to make, and micro transactions are insanely popular. With the first year of Konami’s mobile game “Dragon Collection” a boost of profits in the neighborhood of 80%! What would you do if you were Konami and you were looking at all that juicy Yen?
Kojima’s non-compete clause is up in December, and he becomes a free agent. You KNOW the entire industry will be clamoring to hire the developer.
Where would YOU like to see Kojima go? What company would utilize his abilities the most?
UPDATE
As of the writing of this piece, Kotaku published a translated article from TokyoSports (which directly quotes Gamespot)[There is a lot of fucking quoting and referencing going on with this whole deal.] that Konami official are directly refuting the statement that Kojima is done with the company.
Currently, Kojima and the development team are finished developing Metal Gear Solid V and are taking a long time off from work. (When asked about the going away party their response was) We’re not sure what kind of thing this was.
So maybe Kojima is still sticking around with Konami? The “vacation” line can be speculated that this is just a long gradual fadeout, as the company has a habit of taking employees and redeploying them at other posts, such as janitors or assembly line workers.
Guess we’ll know for sure in November if Kojima is working over at Nintendo.
UPDATE
This picture recently surfaced from Twitter. Looks like a going away party to me!
