The Foot-Shooting Foolishness of Konami

Konami, are you kidding me?



Really?



Really really?



Never get rid of the face of the franchise, no matter what. I argued this in baseball, and I am arguing this in business. Never, ever, ever get rid of the face of the franchise unless you have an awesome backup plan. And I am sure that Konami doesn’t have that backup plan. Konami survives on everything BUT gaming, and trust me that can only take you so far if you are one of the biggest gaming companies out there---eventually that expensive tab needs to be paid for.

Konami is nowhere near what it used to be in the gaming industry, they are a long way removed from their Turtles in Time days. Their revenue definitely doesn’t come from their video games because that aspect is down to the bare minimum. They have Silent Hill (seen better days), Pro Evolution Soccer (getting mauled by the FIFA franchise), Yu-Gi-Oh (The Abridged Series has higher ratings) and of course Metal Gear Solid (which may never recover after Kojima’s departure).

Why would you ever manage to lose the man responsible for your best-selling games in the past decade? 4 of the best-selling games in Konami’s history are guess what: Metal Gear Solid games. Why would you get rid of the man that gave you your only two games that sold over 6 million? And even more astonishing is that those Metal Gear games were only on the PS2. Why get rid of the man that has earned you nearly 2 billion in revenue through his creations? Kojima isn’t just a name, it’s a brand, it’s a guarantee that your video game will be good.

It may have been a power struggle within the industry, but Kojima earned his power by being one of the top developers in the industry. Kojima earned this power by providing the effort that the company he worked for could not and did not provide. Konami has been merely playing business chess for years as opposed to improving their brands of Silent Hill, Pro Evolution, Castlevania, and even the acquired franchises like Bomberman, Adventure Island, and Bonk (It has been over 20 years since a true Bonk game….are you kidding me?).

You keep him, you keep the Walt Disney of your company on board. At all costs. There really is no excuse. You know once he goes, most of his talented followers will leave as well. It’s the equivalent of removing five pieces from the center of any jenga set. Kojima is to Konami what Miyamoto is to Nintendo---absolutely irreplaceable, especially when your company doesn’t churn out the Nintendo profits.



Make nice. Buy him a car. Buy him a plane. Give him company stake. Do whatever it takes. Because of Kojima leaves, then Metal Hear Solid will slip and ultimately so will your company.





I am sure Sony (and maybe even Hollywood) is eagerly awaiting his departure……….

The First White Flag of the Eighth Generation

Nintendo Gamecube Release: 2001
Nintendo Wii Annoucement: 2005


Nintendo Wii Release: 2006
Nintendo WiiU Annoucement: 2011


Nintendo WiiU Release: 2012
Nintendo Successor Announcement: March 2015


Abandon ship gamers. Leave the WiiU right now. Nintendo couldn’t even wait three full years to announce that they have a successor to the rapidly-decaying Nintendo WiiU. And yes it’s just a codename, and yes we all knew this day would come. However, you make these major announcements only when your momentum with the current console starts running out. And after a bit north of two years, the Big N has pretty much unveiled their lack of hope and faith in their third-place system by not announcing a successor, but then even mentioning how its entering the smartphone business after years of denial and refusing to accept the technology. 

Run, run away fast Nintendo fans. There is nothing to see here. Yes we have a great Smash Brothers and superb sort-of 3-D Mario game in the console, but besides Zelda (and maybe Star Fox? Where are the details?) what is there to look forward to? I don’t hear of another console Pokemon game, another Donkey Kong game, no Fire Emblem, no F-Zero, no Kid Icarus, no Wario, nothing. It looks like even the first-party lineup has been severely scaled back. The 3DS got an astonishing 3 major Zelda titles. The WiiU couldn’t get 3 of anything. There is a chance that the WiiU by the end of its run won’t even outsell the Nintendo Gamecube; which is a ridiculous shame because the XBox One and the PS4 are selling at record pace and the gaming industry is bigger than ever.

And if you think I might be slightly looking too much into this; this comes after Miyamoto admits that there won’t be a 3-D Mario game. What Nintendo system doesn’t get the big Mario game? One that is being abandoned, that’s what.

Of course Nintendo is going to not reveal any specific details until at the earliest E3 2016, so they can nab whoever might be left in considering to purchase one thanks to Skyrim Zelda looming on the horizon. Not only does the WiiU get consistently outsold by the PS3, but even the Vita is performing better. Third-party companies have already left, and not even a good Wind Waker bundle and a price cut could remedy a positive solution. Unlike what happened with the N64 and Gamecube, Nintendo has decided to quietly pull the plug early before any further damage is done.

Whatever the Nintendo NX becomes, the company needs to learn from the mistakes made in the past five years with the Wii’s final years and the WiiU disaster. If you don’t own a WiiU yet, really think about it before purchasing one. There are good games to be played here, that part is true. However do you really want to now make an investment on a console that slowly but surely being abandoned by pretty much everybody?



The white flag has been raised. The eighth generation has pretty much become a two-console race.

The Shifting Culture of Third-Party Publishing

Old-school gamers, let it go: the 90s are over.

We will never see what we witnessed in the 90s ever again. The business of gaming has changed far too much. And the latest, greatest example is Sega deciding to ditch console gaming altogether at the same time as Titanfall 2 being announced as multi-platform as opposed to just being an XBox One exclusive like the original.

Those backyard wars days are over. Companies don’t team up anymore, they just join all the parties that want to participate. You now need to fetch extra money to have exclusive material. The XBox and the Playstation has had a similar lineup of games for the past decade. This is why their sales become eerily similar in recent generations and recent times:

PS3: 85 million
XBox 360: 84 million
PS4 (In 2015): 1.5 million
XBox One (In 2015): 650,000


However the close numbers from the 90s was because the entire world was split between choosing the Genesis and the Super Nintendo: two drastically different pieces of hardware with similar power but totally dissimilar lineup of games. You could go with the sports-heavy, more mature, more underground Sega Genesis, or go with the Japanese-friendly, platform-heavy, family-oriented Super Nintendo. Third-party companies were picking sides, trying to figure out the winning team while simultaneously establishing stronger relationships with whomever they picked. Capcom picked Nintendo, EA picked Sega, Square Soft picked Nintendo, and Disney/Virgin Interactive picked Sega.

Nowadays, good luck getting a major third-party publisher choose you and only you. Grand Theft Auto used to belong to just Sony: now the XBox shares the series. Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid are Japanese favorites that found their way to both Playstation and XBox. Nowadays you need a strong first-party lineup and a good slew of indie games to separate from the rest---which fully explains why PS4 is outperforming the XBox One.

Currently the best-selling game in the planet is The Order: 1886, a Sony-published game. The best-selling game of 2015 so far? Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, a Nintendo-published game. Depending on third-party companies to cater only to you is a pipe dream; games have become more expensive to produce and contribute, and why limit yourself to one hardware when you can also make money on the competitive machine?

Titanfall 2 becoming a PS4 game as well as an XBox One game should not have surprised anybody. Although the original did well on the XBox systems with over 4 million sold, wouldn’t it be better to have your game available to 32 million systems as opposed to 12 million? On a business standpoint, it only makes too much sense. Microsoft however needs to see that their first-party offerings must be stronger since their most successful new franchise is now becoming a Sony property.

Those playground arguments nowadays sure are more boring, since the top two systems have nearly the same games to choose from. This is why more focus has been made on graphics and the specs. There is no Mario vs. Sonic—you can actually now find Sonic across all the platforms, console-wise and handheld-wise. There are only a handful of games that each system has exclusive to themselves. Of course there’s Nintendo but it’s consistently remained a third-wheel whether it’s frighteningly ahead of the pack (Nintendo Wii 2007-2009) or far behind (Nintendo Gamecube 2001-2006, Nintendo WiiU 2012-Now).

There is a very thin line between choosing a PS4 over the XBox, and vice versa. This is very contrasting to what was occurring in the 1990s. Even different companies were developing the same game for the system they had chosen; Aladdin was made by Capcom for the SNES and was made by Virgin for the Sega Genesis. Then let’s not forget when pretty much everybody joined the Playstation team, leaving little to nothing for the N64, Gamecube, Dreamcast, and XBox. That third-party lineup of friends for Sony was amazing from 1995-2005. Third-party business now focuses on achieving the most widespread amount of exposure to hit as much money as possible. To accomplish this, you simply can’t pick sides anymore.

Can’t behave like the 90s. Sega is officially gone, Nintendo’s punch is weaker, there is no Midway, there is no Akklaim, there is no Neversoft, and we are close to seeing the end of Capcom if nothing is done to help them. The game has changed. There is much more money involved, from the spending to the earnings. With Sega gone, an entire chapter of gaming history has pretty much reached its final page.





And we never got that sequel to F-Zero GX….