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[Imbarkus]

FYI Konami is, among other things, a slot machine and systems manufacturer. They sell and lease full slots, licensed and otherwise, probably utilizing iterated versions of the hardware skillsets they developed making arcade games back in the day.

In addition to, and possibly more critical to future growth than, this business is the business of slot management systems and the associated CRM systems needed to operate a casino or gambling business. Konami's product in this space, Synchros, is a newer entry and boasts an array of newer features including integration with mobile apps.

There are a number of competitors in this space but it's not an easy one to break into, regulatory compliance is a big labor and liability overhead factor, so a certain economy of scale is necessary to hang in the game. Konami definitely has the structures in place for this. Competitors with regulatory compliance inroads in North America include Aristocrat Technologies with their OASIS system, Bally (which was recently bought by Shuffle/ShuffleMaster, which itself was recently bought by Scientific Games) and the SDS/Casino Marketplace system, and IGT and their Advantage system. Synchros has been making headway into this market, which is clogged with slow-moving operators with years of proprietary price-fixed entitlement and management structure motivating their development teams to reach the slow crawl at which they move.

In addition, legislation introducing legalized casino gambling (other than Pachinko, which, c'mon... is already gambling) in Japan has made a lot more progress recently than ever before, enough that businesses are banking on a potentially huge market there opening up. Macau was a huge gold rush for a long time but the Chinese government has had its hackles raised over concerns of money laundering and the market is down sharply this year. Japan provides hope to either replace or augment this declining Asian casino revenue, so casino operating companies are willing to invest the capitol on new properties. Of course, new properties means business selling systems and slots, and a Japanese company selling to Japanese casino companies and managers stands to win big due to cultural preference compared to outfits out of Australia and Vegas (or Europe now?) with less impressive tech.

In some territories outside NA, Japan, and China, web and mobile gaming are closing casinos like home consoles closed arcades. I'm not specifically aware if Synchros serves this need or if the tighter mobile app usage you get from it means anything when it comes to online gaming, but it stands to reason. For me, working in the casino industry, Konami could be poised to hit in this space in a big way, having nothing to do with their licensed Neo-Contra slot which, if it succeeds, will not do so based on its brand, with our demographic.

I don't really support this scorched-Earth way of (apparently) exiting the video game industry. Bally didn't need to do it. Williams didn't need to do it. Sega/Sammy, as far as I can tell, is not currently doing it. I wish I had access to numbers to help explain why the AAA and mid-tier videogame development industry is so suddenly unprofitable as to prompt the seeming exit of one of its biggest players. That's the clear confirmation that was the bombshell of this video: Konami is exiting the video game industry. I suppose if your resident auteur starts demanding movie and TV stars and directors and the division becomes unprofitable as a result--you, as management, would have some hard questions to ask yourself about how you let it get that far. But... if I were a CEO... and my primary responsibility was to the shareholders... I can see the business logic leading to decision to amputate the entire division.

I don't support Konami's actions and I think they will earn more ill will and issues long-term with these actions than they know. I just thought you would find interesting my understanding of Konami's standing in the casino space. Sadly I can report that almost nobody I work with will give crap one about any bad gamer PR for the company, there's just too much demographic distance, too little crossover between the two spaces.

If they're trading horses mid-stream than I have to attest I don't think the new horse will buck it. It will be up to the old horse to leave a mark.

 

[PoweredByHentai]

FYI Konami is, among other things, a slot machine and systems manufacturer. They sell and lease full slots, licensed and otherwise, probably utilizing iterated versions of the hardware skillsets they developed making arcade games back in the day.

In addition to, and possibly more critical to future growth than, this business is the business of slot management systems and the associated CRM systems needed to operate a casino or gambling business. Konami's product in this space, Synchros, is a newer entry and boasts an array of newer features including integration with mobile apps.

There are a number of competitors in this space but it's not an easy one to break into, regulatory compliance is a big labor and liability overhead factor, so a certain economy of scale is necessary to hang in the game. Konami definitely has the structures in place for this. Competitors with regulatory compliance inroads in North America include Aristocrat Technologies with their OASIS system, Bally (which was recently bought by Shuffle/ShuffleMaster, which itself was recently bought by Scientific Games) and the SDS/Casino Marketplace system, and IGT and their Advantage system. Synchros has been making headway into this market, which is clogged with slow-moving operators with years of proprietary price-fixed entitlement and management structure motivating their development teams to reach the slow crawl at which they move.

In addition, legislation introducing legalized casino gambling (other than Pachinko, which, c'mon... is already gambling) in Japan has made a lot more progress recently than ever before, enough that businesses are banking on a potentially huge market there opening up. Macau was a huge gold rush for a long time but the Chinese government has had its hackles raised over concerns of money laundering and the market is down sharply this year. Japan provides hope to either replace or augment this declining Asian casino revenue, so casino operating companies are willing to invest the capitol on new properties. Of course, new properties means business selling systems and slots, and a Japanese company selling to Japanese casino companies and managers stands to win big due to cultural preference compared to outfits out of Australia and Vegas (or Europe now?) with less impressive tech.

In some territories outside NA, Japan, and China, web and mobile gaming are closing casinos like home consoles closed arcades. I'm not specifically aware if Synchros serves this need or if the tighter mobile app usage you get from it means anything when it comes to online gaming, but it stands to reason. For me, working in the casino industry, Konami could be poised to hit in this space in a big way, having nothing to do with their licensed Neo-Contra slot which, if it succeeds, will not do so based on its brand, with our demographic.

I don't really support this scorched-Earth way of (apparently) exiting the video game industry. Bally didn't need to do it. Williams didn't need to do it. Sega/Sammy, as far as I can tell, is not currently doing it. I wish I had access to numbers to help explain why the AAA and mid-tier videogame development industry is so suddenly unprofitable as to prompt the seeming exit of one of its biggest players. That's the clear confirmation that was the bombshell of this video: Konami is exiting the video game industry. I suppose if your resident auteur starts demanding movie and TV stars and directors and the division becomes unprofitable as a result--you, as management, would have some hard questions to ask yourself about how you let it get that far. But... if I were a CEO... and my primary responsibility was to the shareholders... I can see the business logic leading to decision to amputate the entire division.

I don't support Konami's actions and I think they will earn more ill will and issues long-term with these actions than they know. I just thought you would find interesting my understanding of Konami's standing in the casino space. Sadly I can report that almost nobody I work with will give crap one about any bad gamer PR for the company, there's just too much demographic distance, too little crossover between the two spaces.

If they're trading horses mid-stream than I have to attest I don't think the new horse will buck it. It will be up to the old horse to leave a mark.

The Mid-tier video games industry collapsed because of the PS3/360 split. It also didn't help that the Wii did not have the sort of user base that would normally buy these types of games. Anyway, because there was no computationally practical market leader, mid-tier developers had to develop for two completely different console architectures. Cross-platform development is and always will be prohibitively expensive. Even Zeboyd has chimed in on this.

The NES to PS2 console generations almost always had a market leader that had an overwhelming lead over its nearest competitor, usually at least 60% of the market share but often times effectively 70% of the market share. This meant that mid-tier developers could focus on a single platform and be able to cater to the majority of the total console user base.

 

[Imbarkus]

The Mid-tier video games industry collapsed because of the PS3/360 split. It also didn't help that the Wii did not have the sort of user base that would normally buy these types of games. Anyway, because there was no computationally practical market leader, mid-tier developers had to develop for two completely different console architectures. Cross-platform development is and always will be prohibitively expensive. Even Zeboyd has chimed in on this.

The NES to PS2 console generations almost always had a market leader that had an overwhelming lead over its nearest competitor, usually at least 60% of the market share but often times effectively 70% of the market share. This meant that mid-tier developers could focus on a single platform and be able to cater to the majority of the total console user base.

Yet multiplatform releases were still very numerous and common in the PS2 era.

I have to think that the simpler engines needed for those consoles and their feature sets were just... cheaper. In house or out of house. This last generation is where the rise of middleware really took hold, and when you look at it from that perspective, developers really could target one single platform and hit most of the market: the Unreal Engine.

However there is now a cut for the engine and a cut for the publisher in this generation, and any developer who didn't sign up and went their own way developing their own engine as an alternative is now courting bankruptcy: Konami and FoxEngine, CryTech and CryEngine, Id and IdTech. If it weren't for Bethesda and Gamebryo I think it might even be a hard and fast rule, and you could even still argue that the engine tried to bankrupt both them and Obsidian.

Oh, and Rockstar. GTAV's not in Renderware, is it?

 

[specialK]

still remember when konami used to be great

 

[Bulzeeb]

well i hope this explodes harder than the Nintendo automatic flagged content a few weeks ago

 

[IrishNinja]

Sammy already beat me to it with their cynical mishandling of Sega.

yup
YUUUUUP

Someone should start a new thread on this. How's that all-digital future coming along, y'all?

for real, whoever saw this coming from a system where the defense force's mantra was owning the license, not the game etc etc

 

[slop101]

Yeah, I'm not sure if I'd put this whole thing on Konami. Or, I mean, I kinda get where they're coming from. Triple-A game development/production/cost has gotten out of hand, and plenty of those games don't return enough money. I'm guessing they did the numbers for Silent Hills and saw that they wouldn't make enough money for how much it was going to cost them. Sure, they're being dicks too, maybe more so, but if I were running a company that consistently lost money on increasingly expensive projects, I'd cut the cord as well.

 

[akidnamededdy]

Yeah, I'm not sure if I'd put this whole thing on Konami. Or, I mean, I kinda get where they're coming from. Triple-A game development/production/cost has gotten out of hand, and plenty of those games don't return enough money. I'm guessing they did the numbers for Silent Hills and saw that they wouldn't make enough money for how much it was going to cost them. Sure, they're being dicks too, maybe more so, but if I were running a company that consistently lost money on increasingly expensive projects, I'd cut the cord as well.

I get that, but there's got to be a better way of doing it than the way they're going about it right now. They've been a staple in the videogame industry for decades and are sitting on a pile of the medium's greatest IP, you'd think they would be able to bow out a little more gracefully.

Plus, the soundness of their decisions from a business perspective doesn't really account for the utterly shitty way they've been handling the Kojima situation (attempting to scrub his name from years-old releases, gagging the entire studio behind their biggest game ever, etc.).

 

[PoweredByHentai]

Yet multiplatform releases were still very numerous and common in the PS2 era.

I have to think that the simpler engines needed for those consoles and their feature sets were just... cheaper. In house or out of house. This last generation is where the rise of middleware really took hold, and when you look at it from that perspective, developers really could target one single platform and hit most of the market: the Unreal Engine.

However there is now a cut for the engine and a cut for the publisher in this generation, and any developer who didn't sign up and went their own way developing their own engine as an alternative is now courting bankruptcy: Konami and FoxEngine, CryTech and CryEngine, Id and IdTech. If it weren't for Bethesda and Gamebryo I think it might even be a hard and fast rule, and you could even still argue that the engine tried to bankrupt both them and Obsidian.

Oh, and Rockstar. GTAV's not in Renderware, is it?

Multi-platform games prior to the PS3/360 generation usually came from the larger developers/publishers or were staggered releases. Staggered as in the game was released on one platform first, then a port for another platform was released at a later date.

Engines are not one-size-fits-all solutions because aside from needing to customize the rule set to whatever you are working on, you still have to make sure that the sucker runs on the platform you are building for.

 

[Imbarkus]

Wouldn't the vastly increased similarity of current gen consoles, as well as their similarity to PC, ameliorate the effect on AAA you are postulating for this generation? Perhaps there are just too few mid-tier and AAA devs left to enjoy and take advantage?

 

[akidnamededdy]

Wouldn't the vastly increased similarity of current gen consoles, as well as their similarity to PC, ameliorate the effect on AAA you are postulating for this generation? Perhaps there are just too few mid-tier and AAA devs left to enjoy and take advantage?

Too little too late, maybe. Last gen really took a toll on Japanese devs in particular.

 

[Falk]

Whoa. This went from comical to just plain fucked.

About that "Is Konami sabotaging the console environment" thread...

 

[FF Seraphim]

Not sure if this has been posted, but...



If this is true then... HOLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYYY SHIT

Hopefully it's just a network error or something... Because that's one shitty system and Sony better fix it. God Konami just cannot stop fucking up

 

[Game Guru]

But more likely than anything else, they will potentially attempt the IP monetization trick and make money getting other companies to pay for the licenses and make the games themselves. Not that I see that working or anything, but it sounds stupid enough for Konami to try it.

If that is what Konami is going to do, I can see it hilariously failing. On the one hand, you've got Konami's current actions which are going to paint their entire company in an extremely bad light if they want to license out their IPs to other companies and on the other hand, you have one of Konami's former employees making the "Castlevania" he never could under Konami and succeeding at it. Any company who would want to license out a Konami IP for their own game would have one huge ass elephant in the room... "Given Konami's current reputation among the fanbase and the utter success that IGA had in making his Castlevania clone, why do I need a Konami IP?" Even EA of all people knows when to step it back with the assholishness even if only for a while because this sort of thing just hurts the company's reputation.

 

[dark_chris]

Konami is basically going all "yeah, talk shit. Boycott all you want. We don't care. We'll still make money off you anyway."

 

[hateradio]

Paints a grim picture.


RIP

 

[Memorabilia]

LOL Just hurry up and die already Konami. Seriously. When a company's executives are so obviously joyless that they bring nothing positive to the gaming community its time to go.

 

[Diffense]

The Mid-tier video games industry collapsed because of the PS3/360 split. It also didn't help that the Wii did not have the sort of user base that would normally buy these types of games. Anyway, because there was no computationally practical market leader, mid-tier developers had to develop for two completely different console architectures. Cross-platform development is and always will be prohibitively expensive. Even Zeboyd has chimed in on this.

The NES to PS2 console generations almost always had a market leader that had an overwhelming lead over its nearest competitor, usually at least 60% of the market share but often times effectively 70% of the market share. This meant that mid-tier developers could focus on a single platform and be able to cater to the majority of the total console user base.

Or they gambled (against the Wii), supported the Ps360 instead, and lost. Monster Hunter Tri sold about 2 million WW. Resident Evil 4 Wii edition also sold around 2 million. It wasn't impossible to sell those types of games to the Wii audience even though the audience for those genres was not being fostered by third parties. It was crazy how thoroughly 3rd parties kept their high-profile franchises away from the Wii despite the fact that it was owned by 100 million people. In retrospect, I might even say it was stupid.

I get that Wii wasn't expected to explode the way it did, that it was underpowered relative to PS360 and that Playstation was the console on which a number of popular 3rd party franchises were born and where sequels were expected. Yet it's still fascinating that Wii proved itself and became a huge phenomenon yet quality 3rd party support never followed. If the problem was the Ps360 split it was a problem created by the publishers. They had an undisputed market leader they just chose to snub it (with the possible exceptions of Capcom and Enix). Probably they were right to do so but *if* their bottom lines suffered due to those decisions, maybe not.

 

[Terrell]

If that is what Konami is going to do, I can see it hilariously failing. On the one hand, you've got Konami's current actions which are going to paint their entire company in an extremely bad light if they want to license out their IPs to other companies and on the other hand, you have one of Konami's former employees making the "Castlevania" he never could under Konami and succeeding at it. Any company who would want to license out a Konami IP for their own game would have one huge ass elephant in the room... "Given Konami's current reputation among the fanbase and the utter success that IGA had in making his Castlevania clone, why do I need a Konami IP?" Even EA of all people knows when to step it back with the assholishness even if only for a while because this sort of thing just hurts the company's reputation.

I don't disagree. But at this point, if you're exiting the game industry, might as well fire-sale the IP to get the most money they can out of the exit. There are companies who would pay for some of these IPs:

Metal Gear
Castlevania (because IGA doesn't hold a franchise monopoly on it)
Contra
Silent Hill
Goemon
Rocket Knight (Sparkster)
Tokimeki Memorial
Suikoden
Snatcher
Gradius/Parodius
Zone of the Enders
Winning Eleven

........ actually, that list is surprisingly small, Konami sure did lean on a handful of titles for quite a long time.
But the fact remains that there are developers and publishers who would want them.

This also doesn't include the Hudson properties they acquired:

Adventure Island
Bomberman
Bloody Roar
Tengai Makyo (which was considered in the same tier as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, back in the day)
Momotaro

Or they gambled (against the Wii), supported the Ps360 instead, and lost. Monster Hunter Tri sold about 2 million WW. Resident Evil 4 Wii edition also sold around 2 million. It wasn't impossible to sell those types of games to the Wii audience even though the audience for those genres was not being fostered by third parties. It was crazy how thoroughly 3rd parties kept their high-profile franchises away from the Wii despite the fact that it was owned by 100 million people. In retrospect, I might even say it was stupid.

I get that Wii wasn't expected to explode the way it did, that it was underpowered relative to PS360 and that Playstation was the console on which a number of popular 3rd party franchises were born and where sequels were expected. Yet it's still fascinating that Wii proved itself and became a huge phenomenon yet quality 3rd party support never followed. If the problem was the Ps360 split it was a problem created by the publishers. They had an undisputed market leader they just chose to snub it (with the possible exceptions of Capcom and Enix). Probably they were right to do so but *if* their bottom lines suffered due to those decisions, maybe not.

Winner winner chicken dinner!

 

[gconsole]

Or they gambled (against the Wii), supported the Ps360 instead, and lost. Monster Hunter Tri sold about 2 million WW. Resident Evil 4 Wii edition also sold around 2 million. It wasn't impossible to sell those types of games to the Wii audience even though the audience for those genres was not being fostered by third parties. It was crazy how thoroughly 3rd parties kept their high-profile franchises away from the Wii despite the fact that it was owned by 100 million people. In retrospect, I might even say it was stupid.

I get that Wii wasn't expected to explode the way it did, that it was underpowered relative to PS360 and that Playstation was the console on which a number of popular 3rd party franchises were born and where sequels were expected. Yet it's still fascinating that Wii proved itself and became a huge phenomenon yet quality 3rd party support never followed. If the problem was the Ps360 split it was a problem created by the publishers. They had an undisputed market leader they just chose to snub it (with the possible exceptions of Capcom and Enix). Probably they were right to do so but *if* their bottom lines suffered due to those decisions, maybe not.

They are not stupid and u need to be less delusional. 100million audience means nothing if they are not the target market. I open the shop before and 80% of the people who bought Wii is soccer mom, retired old couple, family with kids, etc. These are not the type of audience who will play hardcore game. Raise any non Nintendo game sell number and compare to the rest and you will see.

 

[Cyborg]

This isn't going to end well.
I think this is the begin of the End for Konami. I think Sony should step up and buy the rights for Metal Gear, Castlevania and Pro Evo.

Sony, do it!

 

[Terrell]

They are not stupid and u need to be less delusional. 100million audience means nothing if they are not the target market. I open the shop before and 80% of the people who bought Wii is soccer mom, retired old couple, family with kids, etc. These are not the type of audience who will play hardcore game. Raise any non Nintendo game sell number and compare to the rest and you will see.

Well, not even trying certainly did a bunch of them wonders, didn't it? Every Japanese publisher is scrambling now and leaning so hard on a very small number of franchises because the others didn't sell to their "target market". It's hard to argue that an alternative wouldn't have been better when we see the results of going the way you suggest was the only option.

 

[Diffense]

They are not stupid and u need to be less delusional. 100million audience means nothing if they are not the target market. I open the shop before and 80% of the people who bought Wii is soccer mom, retired old couple, family with kids, etc. These are not the type of audience who will play hardcore game. Raise any non Nintendo game sell number and compare to the rest and you will see.

Nothing on PS360 sold more than Mario Kart so comparing Nintendo game sales to the few relatively big third party releases on Wii is not err ... probative.

Mario Kart Wii is a very interesting case as it sold a whopping 35+ million. That's more than the entire Gamecube user base. Did Nintendo gain a heck of a lot more hardcore fans or did some of the 'casuals' pick it up? IMO, it benefited from the sheer number of people that owned a Wii.

My argument is that it may not have been wise to virtually ignore 100 milliion people that bought a machine that ONLY plays games. But if you say that's delusional maybe it is .... lol

[BTW, Wii was underpowered and beneath some publishers but now they're bailing to make mobile games. Kinda funny eh...ABANDON SHIP!]

 

[Marvel]

If you'd have told me many years ago how Konami would fall off I would have laughed at you.

 

[_Spr_Drnk]

Upwards. Dig upwards.

 

[fvng]

Is there a mirror of this video?

 

[Diffense]

If you'd have told me many years ago how Konami would fall off I would have laughed at you.

It's really a shame.

I associated the Konami brand with quality and was a fan of the Contra series. I played through Contra, Super Contra and Contra 3 and I also bought the Wii e-shop title (forgot the name). I wasn't a HUGE Castlevania fan but I loved Circle of the Moon for the GBA. It was surprisingly expansive, had great music and presented a decent challenge.

Of course it's sad to see Konami die, as far as console gaming is concerned, but the way it's happening is even worse.

 

[Shyakugaun]

It seems like the video is back up

 

[PoweredByHentai]

Or they gambled (against the Wii), supported the Ps360 instead, and lost. Monster Hunter Tri sold about 2 million WW. Resident Evil 4 Wii edition also sold around 2 million. It wasn't impossible to sell those types of games to the Wii audience even though the audience for those genres was not being fostered by third parties. It was crazy how thoroughly 3rd parties kept their high-profile franchises away from the Wii despite the fact that it was owned by 100 million people. In retrospect, I might even say it was stupid.

I get that Wii wasn't expected to explode the way it did, that it was underpowered relative to PS360 and that Playstation was the console on which a number of popular 3rd party franchises were born and where sequels were expected. Yet it's still fascinating that Wii proved itself and became a huge phenomenon yet quality 3rd party support never followed. If the problem was the Ps360 split it was a problem created by the publishers. They had an undisputed market leader they just chose to snub it (with the possible exceptions of Capcom and Enix). Probably they were right to do so but *if* their bottom lines suffered due to those decisions, maybe not.

I would argue that Monster Hunter Tri would have sold 2 million regardless of which platform it was on simply because it is Monster Hunter. Switching from PSP to Wii was a much more manageable step than trying to wrangle with the obscenity that is the PS3's Cell architecture.

And regarding high profile franchises, which high profile franchises? Because I would wager that most high profile franchises would depend on having access to more buttons than what the Wiimote and Nunchuk provided, which meant getting people to pick up Yet Another Accessory (the Classic Controller). Convincing people to pick up additional Wiimotes is easy; convincing people to pick up the Classic Controller requires a use-case scenario that already falls out of the average Wii user's normal activity. Furthermore, the Classic Controller is the anti-thesis of everything that the Wii stood for: simple and intuitive fun. This is yet another reason why Monster Hunter Tri is more of an exception than the norm.

 

[Theonik]

Sammy already beat me to it with their cynical mishandling of Sega.

Eh, SEGA was never well managed even before Sammy. At least they kept SEGA on life support for a few years after they took the dive.

Edit:

I would argue that Monster Hunter Tri would have sold 2 million regardless of which platform it was on simply because it is Monster Hunter. Switching from PSP to Wii was a much more manageable step than trying to wrangle with the obscenity that is the PS3's Cell architecture.

Capcom already had in-house PS360 technology at this point to go the other way Tri.
I think it was less the architectural roadblock and more a decision to not produce HD assets for their games in the MH series.
That strategy has probably worked pretty well for them at this point.

 

[Steroyd]

Nothing on PS360 sold more than Mario Kart so comparing Nintendo game sales to the few relatively big third party releases on Wii is not err ... probative.

Mario Kart Wii is a very interesting case as it sold a whopping 35+ million. That's more than the entire Gamecube user base. Did Nintendo gain a heck of a lot more hardcore fans or did some of the 'casuals' pick it up? IMO, it benefited from the sheer number of people that owned a Wii.

My argument is that it may not have been wise to virtually ignore 100 milliion people that bought a machine that ONLY plays games. But if you say that's delusional maybe it is .... lol

[BTW, Wii was underpowered and beneath some publishers but now they're bailing to make mobile games. Kinda funny eh...ABANDON SHIP!]

Mario Kart Wii is not an interesting case in the slightest, Nintendo games selling on Nintendo systems is the exact symptom to the problem that Nintendo console's have had for generations, look at Mario Kart 8, it sold 5 million on a console projected to sell worse than the Gamecube, and when the WiiU first launched we were talking about 3rd party devs enjoying 10's of thousands of sales regardless of if the ports were good or bad.

And it's not like Activision didn't put Call of Duty on thw Wii, or Fifa or Pro Evo made it onto the system either and we saw games like No More Heroes and Tales of Vesperia Graces get PS3 ports from the Wii.

Publishers ignored the Wii because the audience was unpredictable the death of the Wii in 2012 should speak for itself the staying power of the audience compared to the HD twins, and I highly doubt Japaneese devs cared about the Wii's hardware performance either, it was your Ubisofts and Rockstars with Assassins Creed's, Far Cry's and GTA's who didn't deem the console worthy. I blame Sony and $599 for the great haemorrhage of Japan.

 

[Game Guru]

I don't disagree. But at this point, if you're exiting the game industry, might as well fire-sale the IP to get the most money they can out of the exit. There are companies who would pay for some of these IPs:

Metal Gear
Castlevania (because IGA doesn't hold a franchise monopoly on it)
Contra
Silent Hill
Goemon
Rocket Knight (Sparkster)
Tokimeki Memorial
Suikoden
Snatcher
Gradius/Parodius
Zone of the Enders
Winning Eleven

........ actually, that list is surprisingly small, Konami sure did lean on a handful of titles for quite a long time.
But the fact remains that there are developers and publishers who would want them.

This also doesn't include the Hudson properties they acquired:

Adventure Island
Bomberman
Bloody Roar
Tengai Makyo (which was considered in the same tier as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, back in the day)
Momotaro

I'm not arguing about fire-saling the IPs which seems like what a smart company would do when cutting and running from an industry. What I mean is renting it out for developers to work on while said IPs are still under Konami's supposed control. Also you forgot Frogger.

 

[Theonik]

I'm not arguing about fire-saling the IPs which seems like what a smart company would do when cutting and running from an industry. What I mean is renting it out for developers to work on while said IPs are still under Konami's supposed control. Also you forgot Frogger.

Well... You can look forward to your Frogger slot machines and Pachinkovanias.

 

[PoweredByHentai]

Capcom already had in-house PS360 technology at this point to go the other way Tri.
I think it was less the architectural roadblock and more a decision to not produce HD assets for their games in the MH series.
That strategy has probably worked pretty well for them at this point.

HD assets still factored into dealing with the PS3's architecture. I mean, if you were Capcom, would you release a shitty sub-720p Monster Hunter with shit assets on the PS3? That is simply not happening. The architectural roadblock ended up being an excuse to not bother with trying to get Monster Hunter to work on the PS3.

Remember, this was still before Uncharted 2 came out on the PS3 so the tools that Naughty Dog's ICE TEAM made for Uncharted 2 were likely not in widespread distribution just yet.

 

[Theonik]

HD assets still factored into dealing with the PS3's architecture. I mean, if you were Capcom, would you release a shitty sub-720p Monster Hunter with shit assets on the PS3? That is simply not happening. The architectural roadblock ended up being an excuse to not bother with trying to get Monster Hunter to work on the PS3.

Remember, this was still before Uncharted 2 came out on the PS3 so the tools that Naughty Dog's ICE TEAM made for Uncharted 2 were likely not in widespread distribution just yet.

Well no they wouldn't so to them when making the decision to move the series from PS2/PSP to Wii they factored in the increased risk associated with redoing many of the assets in 'HD quality'. At that point though as far as technology was concerned, Capcom already had several games in their MT Framework engine on PS3 which they could have used.
They eventually moved the games to it with the 3DS and WiiU versions of the game.
It was actually not a bad decision for them as MH games were always 'cheap' money makers for them and they were hedging their bets with their PS3 efforts and felt no need to do anything major with MH at that point.

 

[Game Guru]

Well... You can look forward to your Frogger slot machines and Pachinkovanias.

Actually, if I was an investor at Konami, I would be quite concerned, because I would be asking myself "What's preventing Konami from having this sort of bad PR in regards to their gambling or mobile business should something blow up." I mean, if Konami's console games are unsuccessful and they were leaving the industry relatively peacefully and gamers were being unduly whiny about it, that's one thing, but the sort of sheer malice and incompetence that Konami has shown thus far in regards to the situation would make me concerned for their successful businesses since I assume they'd follow similar PR procedure.

 

[Foffy]

This isn't going to end well.
I think this is the begin of the End for Konami. I think Sony should step up and buy the rights for Metal Gear, Castlevania and Pro Evo.

Sony, do it!

That's why Yoshida backed Bloodstained! He's gonna get Castlevania!

 

[Oddduck]

First, considering all of the terrible bullshit they're already pulling with that game in and of itself, why buy MGSV before cutting them off?

What about buying the game used from GameStop (or somewhere else) so Konami doesn't get a dime of your money?

 

[Diffense]

I would argue that Monster Hunter Tri would have sold 2 million regardless of which platform it was on simply because it is Monster Hunter. Switching from PSP to Wii was a much more manageable step than trying to wrangle with the obscenity that is the PS3's Cell architecture.

And regarding high profile franchises, which high profile franchises? Because I would wager that most high profile franchises would depend on having access to more buttons than what the Wiimote and Nunchuk provided, which meant getting people to pick up Yet Another Accessory (the Classic Controller). Convincing people to pick up additional Wiimotes is easy; convincing people to pick up the Classic Controller requires a use-case scenario that already falls out of the average Wii user's normal activity. Furthermore, the Classic Controller is the anti-thesis of everything that the Wii stood for: simple and intuitive fun. This is yet another reason why Monster Hunter Tri is more of an exception than the norm.

Which franchises other than MH would have sold because they are what they are? Then why weren't more of them on Wii in some form? That's my question.

BTW, I don't think requiring a pro constroller would have been huge issue. Wii's owners understood accessories. Some popular games required them or were bundled with them (eg. Wii Fit and Mario Kart). IIRC, MH Tri was bundled with a pro controller.

Regardless, in their desperation some publishers are now adapting their console franchises to machines designed primarily for talking. They're doing this because a lot of people, including many non-gamers, own them. Wii was a dedicated gaming machine with tens of millions of users (eventually 101+ million) but was so strange that they couldn't figure out how to bring their key franchises to it? I think not. IMO, inertia and myopia played a huge role.

The "splitting off" of the market leader and the decision to pick both horses in the PS360 dead heat was due to the 3rd party publishers. You mentioned that there is usually a clear market leader that gets most of the support. Well last gen was only an exception in that the market leader was basically ignored by third parties not that there was no clear leader.

Despite the fact that the console with the most users usually gets the most support, there seems to be a general consensus that the publishers' unusual decision last generation was the right one. However, if you are saying that mid-tier devs are suffering due the market conditions of the last generation then we should revist that consensus. It's possible that powerful 3rd parties created the toxic conditions by snubbing the clear market leader thereby dividing the market into two apparent niches one of which didn't have a clear frontrunner.

 

[Terrell]

I'm not arguing about fire-saling the IPs which seems like what a smart company would do when cutting and running from an industry. What I mean is renting it out for developers to work on while said IPs are still under Konami's supposed control. Also you forgot Frogger.

Everyone forgets Frogger.

And yeah, you and I are on the same page. The IP fire sale makes the most sense. And tragically that means it will never happen.

Well... You can look forward to your Frogger slot machines and Pachinkovanias.

Pachinkovania.... that's pretty good, 9/10.

Actually, if I was an investor at Konami, I would be quite concerned, because I would be asking myself "What's preventing Konami from having this sort of bad PR in regards to their gambling or mobile business should something blow up." I mean, if Konami's console games are unsuccessful and they were leaving the industry relatively peacefully and gamers were being unduly whiny about it, that's one thing, but the sort of sheer malice and incompetence that Konami has shown thus far in regards to the situation would make me concerned for their successful businesses since I assume they'd follow similar PR procedure.

As it is, I have to wonder how many investors they're going to lose because of all this. I mean, this is a company that built most of its success on video games and so long as they were still in that business, those investors were going to stick around because of the dependable market revenue. The revenue shrank, but it's not like Konami has ever not made money from video games. So this huge jettison of an entire arm of their business, and the associated costs with doing so, can't be making any investor particularly happy when their ambitions in the gambling space haven't come to a comparable net value of what they're losing.

And that's the crazy part: Konami was still making money on games and they're still getting out of games. And meanwhile, companies that everyone says will never cave to pressures of folding their gaming business or considering M&As while losing money in the games industry overall are looking infinitely more vulnerable. So there's probably a LOT of pissed CEOs at game publishers in Japan right now.

 

[Imbarkus]

I feel like even though the Wii was the clear winner last gen for install base, but the 3rd party software for the system was so packed with indiscriminately approved shovelware that press started to completely ignore it, and then eventually gamers did too.

Nintendo's own releases were immune to this effect. So, strangely, the company that lifted the U.S. out of the video game market crash by limiting releases and ensuring quality continued that tradition on the Wii only with their own releases, and for their own releases, it worked.

But for everyone else in 3rd party they permitted so much minigame trash and minimal releases that they created their own little market glut and crash--Majesco, Hudson, Crave, etc. They have managed to rise above it for only 1st party releases, and only last gen. If you ask me they were somehow completely unaware that the brand Wii, in my part of the country where people bought Carnival Games and hunting simulators, now conveyed garbage software. I remain convinced this factor has more than any other diminished the success of WiiU.

A quick browse of Konami titles on Wii on Amazon, including Dance Dance, Karaoke Revolution, Deca Sports, Lost in Blue, Kororinpa, etc. would seem to indicate a lot of third party releases on Wii. I wonder how that treated them, financially. It also really reminded me of how few pieces of software Konami is working on now compared to what they used to.

The revenue shrank, but it's not like Konami has ever not made money from video games. So this huge jettison of an entire arm of their business, and the associated costs with doing so, can't be making any investor particularly happy when their ambitions in the gambling space haven't come to a comparable net value of what they're losing.

I must point out that this final assertion is actually not known. Particularly in the gold rush that will ensue if Japan legalizes casino gambling.

 

[Motoko]

I can't open a new thread so I post here,

http://multiplayer.it/notizie/149750-pro-evolution-soccer-2015-pes-2015-konami-ha-cancellato-la-serie-di-pro-evolution-soccer.html

Take it as a big rumor, the news itself says that, but from a finacial report, Konami has not show a new Winning Eleven game for this year. Only a f2p myclub edition for the jdm.
Also the italian site waits for a response from Konami.

Do you have more info about that guys?
This is going to be a big drama, maybe Konami is really exit the market.




Kill it with fire if old.

 

[Imbarkus]

Seems likely to me that "Konami Exits Video Game Industry" was the piece of insider info they were trying to control by striking this video. But it snuck out without a bombshell because its not really news if it comes from an unconfirmed anonymous source. It's not the knd of thing you announce, the truth of it will only bear out in time.

Looks pretty sparse after March on the chart...

 

[jimi_dini]

And regarding high profile franchises, which high profile franchises? Because I would wager that most high profile franchises would depend on having access to more buttons than what the Wiimote and Nunchuk provided, which meant getting people to pick up Yet Another Accessory (the Classic Controller).

I totally disagree.

First of all, Wii consumers didn't have a problem with let's say the Mario Kart Wheel and especially not a problem with the Balance Board. Wii Fit sold around 23 MILLION copies. Wii Fit Plus sold around 21 MILLION copies. So around one FOURTH of the whole Wii install base. How is this possible when a quite expensive controller was needed to actually "play" those titles?

Link's Crossbow training, which was basically the Wii Zapper + a small game, sold an insane 5 MILLION times. And we are talking about some plastic in this case. It wasn't even an actual controller. It was some plastic to hold the Wiimote.

If the typical Wii consumer was as stupid as you say (or as old fashioned and stubborn like the typical "i want to play everything using dual stick controllers, because I don't want anything new or fresh"-gamer), then those wouldn't have sold that many times.

I personally really enjoyed that approach. Some games are better suited to a classic controller. Some games are better suited to Wiimote and so on. Some games actually played really well using the Balance Board. The typical "one fits all" approach is simply crap, because some games will suffer. I mean just look at Donkey Kong Country Returns. That game actually suffered because of tacked on motion controls. BUT other games were massively improved by them.

Someone already said that several games were bundled with a Classic Controllers. Monster Hunter Tri comes to mind. Xenoblade is another of those titles. Last Story was also sold separately + as a bundle with the Pro Controller (the latter in Japan) and I'm sure there were more than that.

And finally - there were quite a few "very complex" games on Wii, that were supporting Wiimote + Nunchuk only. For example Metroid Prime games. There were even open world games like Scarface, that did only support Wiimote + Nunchuk and the controls of those were simply perfect. There was nothing that you couldn't do in the Wii version compared to the other versions. Hell, Drive-Bys in Scarface were way way better than in every other version. And motion controls in for example Godfather actually improved the game in a significant manner.

When you actually played lots of Wii games, then you would know that only some Wii games were "easy and simple". All sorts of other Wii games weren't. In fact the Wii had an insane amount of special hidden gems. Just like the PS2 had all sorts of gems, which made both the Wii and PS2 special. Those games wouldn't have made it onto PS3/360 especially not as physical releases thanks to insane budgets and publishers not wanting to risk higher budgets on some obscure game design.

 

[PtM]

Hmm, this is interesting:

https://twitter.com/superbunnyhop/status/597857120604688384


Konami didn't remove the DMCA, Youtube did?

Maybe it wasn't even Konami.

I stopped watching the video when they starting showing P.T.

just a heads up for some who haven't played it.

Not sure if trolling.

Spoiler

Those who haven't played it most likely never will.

 

[Imbarkus]

I can't open a new thread so I post here,

http://multiplayer.it/notizie/149750-pro-evolution-soccer-2015-pes-2015-konami-ha-cancellato-la-serie-di-pro-evolution-soccer.html

Take it as a big rumor, the news itself says that, but from a finacial report, Konami has not show a new Winning Eleven game for this year. Only a f2p myclub edition for the jdm.
Also the italian site waits for a response from Konami.

Do you have more info about that guys?
This is going to be a big drama, maybe Konami is really exit the market.




Kill it with fire if old.

Screw it I made the thread for you Motoko.

www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=163793767

 

[Motoko]

Thanks!

 

[Imbarkus]

Thanks!

Thanks for the scurrilous rumory tip!

 

[Xamtheking]

Konami, please just leave

 

[Asd202]

Konami, please just leave

Not long now.