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NEWS: Metal Gear Solid Voice Actor Akio Ohtsuka: Kojima Productions 'Was Dissolved'

FalconPunch wrote:

Ew, after the Phantom Pain, I'm no longer supporting Konami, they would likely turn into how Sega is now, or worse, the current SNK Playmore.

At least Sega recently stated that they've learned a lot from how Atlus operates. With any luck, we should see a revitalized Sega sometime in the near future. Hopefully.

Japanese mobile games such as Puzzle & Dragons and Brave Frontier are beloved in their home country, but reviled by Westerners as not "proper" games due to not being on a PC or some sort of dedicated gaming device. It gets worse if the game in question uses a "free-to-play" model, which is seen by Westerners as a disgusting attempt at a cheap cashgrab with Pay To Win implications. Part of the success of mobile gaming can be attributed to Japan's culture of being overworked;note since there is simply not enough time for many to sit down with a console or PC, it is more feasible to carry around handheld systems and mobile phones and use those for gaming instead, since those can be played on a commute train, at a cafe, etc. Westerners, in comparison, have the free time necessary to enjoy console and PC games, and thus see mobile games as simply cheap cashgrabs and novelties designed for "casual gamers". For this same reason, Japanese developers such as CAVE, Taito, and Konami are becoming increasingly disliked by Western fans for shifting away from console games to mobile games, viewing it as acts of abandoning their overseas fanbases. Similarly, the director of Final Fantasy XV, Hajime Tabata, citing the aforementioned reasons, has said that whether or not Final Fantasy XV is successful after its release could signal the end of console gaming in Japan.

I have a feeling those games became increasingly more complicated, and expensive. And that the number of units sold didn't offset the costs enough. It's a shame Kojima's been exiled into the wilderness like this, but it's probably for the best. If Konami had kept him on-board, he probably would've frittered away his legacy on a lot of unmemorable games, since there's no way he was going to keep going back to that MGS well.

I think part of the reason they got rid of him (actually vice president of the company) was probably his focus on the console and PC market didn't mesh too well with Konami's stated focus on mobile and pachinko/gambling, I suspect they're almost totally abandoning console/pc after MGSV.

All that doesn't do enough to explain essentially breaking up Kojima Procductions and censuring him. No whatever Kojima did or didn't do sincerely pissed off the of Konami.