The Rise and Fall of Konami
Konami was founded on March 21st, 1969 and then incorporated under the name, Konami Industry Co., Ltd 4 years later. The founder, Kagemasa Kozuki, ran a jukebox rental and repair business in Osaka before turning those businesses into a manufacturer for amusement machines, also called arcade games. Their first coin-operated game machines were made in 1978 and exported the products to the United States the following year.
It was in 1981 that Konami had achieved success with video games like Scramble, which was led to the sequel, Super Cobra and then, Frogger. Three of those games were licensed to American companies like Stern Electronics and Gremlin Industries. In 1982, Konami of America was established, which was when the corporation began to expand their video game business following a brief stint releasing the games for the Atari 2600. They also released games for the MSX computer in 1983, and then the NES in 1985. During that time, brand new IPs were being developed and released on those consoles, including at arcades, such as Castlevania, Gradius, TwinBee, Mystical Ninja, and Contra. However, Konami's most successful game is what led to them becoming the most hated and controversial company in recent memory, and that was Metal Gear Solid.
The first Metal Gear game was released in 1987 on the MSX and NES and at arcades, and was Hideo Kojima's first fully developed game and a partnership was born, and went on to make 4 more sequels. Metal Gear sold over 1 million units in Japan and became the second top-selling game for 5 months in the United States.
After the release of Snake's Revenger and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Konami's legal name changed to Konami Co., Ltd. in June 1991, and was relocated to Minato, Tokyo 2 years later. Konami started supporting 16-bit consoles including the brand new PC and the SEGA Genesis. After the launch of the SEGA Saturn and the first PlayStation in 1994, Konami became an organized business organization with over a bunch of subsidiaries starting with KCE Studios in April 1995, followed by Kojima Productions in 1996. With the formation of Hideo Kojima's own video game production company, he made another video game masterpiece in the form of the survival horror, Silent Hill and 1998's Metal Gear Solid was released. Silent Hill was also the IP that had since been lost in the shuffle during the Kojima/Konami dissolution, which I will get to in a bit. In 2002, Silent Hill 2 was released to universal acclaim and exceeded its predecessor to new heights due its gut wrenching plot twist.
During the beginning of the 2000s, Konami's English legal name changed to Konami Corporation while the Japanese legal name remained the same. They've also branched out to collectible card games like You-Gi-Oh trading card games, while also developing video games for the sixth-generation consoles like the PlayStation 2 and have branched out to fitness business during the acquisition of Daiei Olympic Sports Club. In 2012, Hudson Soft, the publisher for the Mario Party games was bought by Konami.
During the development days of the MGS games and Silent Hill games, there was no way that Hideo Kojima's prowess would slow down, he was developing a brand new horror game called P.T. and was making Silent Hills. Unfortunately on March 19th, 2015, a few months before Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was released, Kojima's departure was unexpectedly announced and both games were prematurely canceled. The reason? Well, we're going have to go back a few years. In 2010, Konami launched Dragon Collection and it became another success for the company. This card game for the mobile devices were so popular that Konami thought they didn't need AAA games to turn a profit. Konami then announced that they would do a corporate restructure and Kojima's name never came up in the press release. He lost his Executive position and Kojima productions was no more.
During the official statement of Kojima and Konami's breakup, an article was released with details of Kojima and his staff being overworked and downgraded from full-time employees to contractors. Senior staff was cut off and had limited access to their emails, phone lines and internet service. Kojima couldn't even promote his own game, even though he's a celebrity in the game industry. It only got worse from there. Kojima was locked in a separate room during the final months of development.
And so, Konami then continued the Metal Gear franchise with a live service game, Metal Gear Survive which was critically panned upon release, and to put salt on the wound, Konami is working with Bloober Team, the studio behind 2019's Blair Witch and The Medium! It's not Metal Gear and Silent Hill without Kojima, Konami! To be fair, Metal Gear Solid is part of Konami and it's understandable as to why they want to continue it. Due to corporate non-disclosure agreements, we will probably never know the real reason as to why Konamu fired Hideo Kojima in the first place. However there is a silver-lining, Hideo Kojima then made a video game of his own from Kojima Productions for the PS4 called Death Stranding which had mixed response, however its Director's cut is coming to the PlayStation 5 on September 24th. There's also a rumor that he's working on a game with Xbox, which I hope is true.
And so, Konami came from 2 manufacturers, inventing one of the first coin machines which led to them become the biggest conglomerate in Japan, and later the U.S. and then expanding to other places in the two continents, have made popular IPs and were then caught up in their own greed to sell card games rather than the AAA titles that were actually popular with gamers. This led to the firing of a beloved video game designer and the deaths of Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill.
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