And yet companies like Bluepoint did their HD versions off of reverse engineering final disc copies of games.
Particularly on-the-nose, since Bluepoint was responsible for the MGS HD Collection (a superb port), and High Voltage Software (the... masters behind the PC "port" of Mortal Kombat X) was responsible for the ZoE HD Collection, which was derped to the point where Kojima Productions had to step in and fix that shit themselves - and only for the PlayStation 3 version, fuck.
The stronger statement would be to support Kojima's last MGS game and then entirely ignore whatever bullshit Konami makes afterward.
But if reports are to be believed, they won't even bother with another console game, so I guess they win either way.
...How is that the stronger statement? It's not like Kojima is going to see a nickel of the proceeds from the game, so you're not really supporting him at all (in fact, you're probably supporting the project that ended his career), and the entire story of the game's production is one of rampant employee abuse & harassment of small press. If you're really so disgusted by Konami, one would think that you'd at least be able to say that the swan song of their antagonistic behavior in the industry isn't worth buying regardless of how good the marketing material has made it look thus far (or even how good the end product itself really is).
My speculation re: Konami is that someone sold the executives a bill of goods regarding gambling revenues. This happens in gaming-related companies (albeit I can't think of an instance as high profile as this one) on a pretty regular basis. Getting into video poker or slot machine production as a primary source of profit is a great way of going bankrupt overnight.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
The stronger statement would be to support Kojima's last MGS game and then entirely ignore whatever bullshit Konami makes afterward.
But if reports are to be believed, they won't even bother with another console game, so I guess they win either way.
...How is that the stronger statement? It's not like Kojima is going to see a nickel of the proceeds from the game, so you're not really supporting him at all (in fact, you're probably supporting the project that ended his career), and the entire story of the game's production is one of rampant employee abuse & harassment of small press. If you're really so disgusted by Konami, one would think that you'd at least be able to say that the swan song of their antagonistic behavior in the industry isn't worth buying regardless of how good the marketing material has made it look thus far (or even how good the end product itself really is).
My speculation re: Konami is that someone sold the executives a bill of goods regarding gambling revenues. This happens in gaming-related companies (albeit I can't think of an instance as high profile as this one) on a pretty regular basis. Getting into video poker or slot machine production as a primary source of profit is a great way of going bankrupt overnight.
I know we like to bag on Konami here, but the video poker business you're talking about has been making them money for a lot of years. Video gaming hasn't. They could make changes and turn that around, but they are making a decision that has some guaranteed results, borne out by their historical performance.
...How is that the stronger statement? It's not like Kojima is going to see a nickel of the proceeds from the game, so you're not really supporting him at all (in fact, you're probably supporting the project that ended his career), and the entire story of the game's production is one of rampant employee abuse & harassment of small press. If you're really so disgusted by Konami, one would think that you'd at least be able to say that the swan song of their antagonistic behavior in the industry isn't worth buying regardless of how good the marketing material has made it look thus far (or even how good the end product itself really is).
It supports Kojima (less so if the whole "executive pay with fixed salary and no royalties from game" thing linked above is true), but more to the point, it supports every single worker in Kojima Productions who is now on contract under Konami, and they don't deserve being fucked any more than their employers have done so already.
I know we like to bag on Konami here, but the video poker business you're talking about has been making them money for a lot of years. Video gaming hasn't. They could make changes and turn that around, but they are making a decision that has some guaranteed results, borne out by their historical performance.
The figures Konami has produced for their gambling business are (as is typical for entertainment companies that try to diversify into that part of gaming) terrible. It's eclipsed easily twice over by their revenue from video games.
If Konami was feeling the vidya game dooooom, they could've done any number of things to fix their problems: shifted to a model of production that doesn't focus on extremely high visual fidelity, like many smaller studios do, branched out into different development houses that each focus on a different project, collaborated with industry talent & other studios to spread-out the risk for larger projects, etc.
Instead they alienated the press, their customers, their business associates & partners, de-listed from the NYSE before their stock took the hit they knew was coming and have apparently gone all-in on a sucker's game. Even at the height of their popularity, slots & video poker were extremely risky ventures (it's Hella expensive to jump through all of the gaming regulatory hoops, and at the end of the day you're left with a product where your customer couldn't give two shits about your brand name or creativity); as demographics have turned over, the business as a whole has taken a really significant downturn.
Their actions just reek of desperate floundering.
It supports Kojima (less so if the whole "executive pay with fixed salary and no royalties from game" thing linked above is true), but more to the point, it supports every single worker in Kojima Productions who is now on contract under Konami, and they don't deserve being fucked any more than their employers have done so already
Let's be real: those employees are going to be pink-slipped the moment that Konami can pink slip them. They've already received whatever pittance Konami was willing to pay for their work; selling copies of the game will not somehow make them more money. It strictly benefits the publisher, not the employees.
With Love and Courage
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
So you're ironclad sure all these employees' pay isn't affected at all by number of units sold, huh?
So you're ironclad sure all these employees' pay isn't affected at all by number of units sold, huh?
Unless I'm misremembering, it's been previously announced the team has gone to contract for this game only and are almost certain to be let go as soon as the game's finished.
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Yeah, they're on contract, but does that usually entail just being paid specifically for the work they did beforehand?
1. Everyone that worked on the game can get points on the back end of release (but Kojima just chose not to)
2. Everyone that worked on the game gets paid for their time and a "get out" when it's done
Yeah, they're on contract, but does that usually entail just being paid specifically for the work they did beforehand?
Yep.
Unless they're working for somebody awesome, it's not common at all for the grunt employees to get any kind of bonus from a game's performance. I'm guessing modern Konami isn't awesome.
Yeah, they're on contract, but does that usually entail just being paid specifically for the work they did beforehand?
Yep.
Unless they're working for somebody awesome, it's not common at all for the grunt employees to get any kind of bonus from a game's performance. I'm guessing modern Konami isn't awesome.
Company: "The bonus is you get to keep your job after the project ends!"
Employees: "Yay!"
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
Yeah, they're on contract, but does that usually entail just being paid specifically for the work they did beforehand?
Yep.
Unless they're working for somebody awesome, it's not common at all for the grunt employees to get any kind of bonus from a game's performance. I'm guessing modern Konami isn't awesome.
Or they'll do something that seems awesome when they offer it, but will gladly take any loophole they can get to asshole the employees out of money - especially if they can act like they're blameless in doing so. See: Bethesda and New Vegas.
Yeah, they're on contract, but does that usually entail just being paid specifically for the work they did beforehand?
Yep.
Unless they're working for somebody awesome, it's not common at all for the grunt employees to get any kind of bonus from a game's performance. I'm guessing modern Konami isn't awesome.
Or they'll do something that seems awesome when they offer it, but will gladly take any loophole they can get to asshole the employees out of money - especially if they can act like they're blameless in doing so. See: Bethesda and New Vegas.
And even in that case, the money was going to an independent studio itself so they could continue to employ people and make more projects. I don't think any of that bonus was earmarked to the grunts, unless I'm misremembering.
We honestly need to stop saying that gambling venues don't work. Sega Sammy's primary income is through pachinko and pachislot machines. Konami I'm sure is on the lower end of profitable, but it's a sustainable business model if you know what you're doing.
What we're really questioning here is Konami's business model, which could indeed be a spectacular failure across the board. But that doesn't make gambling venues unprofitable, it just means Konami is terrible at everything currently.
We honestly need to stop saying that gambling venues don't work. Sega Sammy's primary income is through pachinko and pachislot machines. Konami I'm sure is on the lower end of profitable, but it's a sustainable business model if you know what you're doing.
What we're really questioning here is Konami's business model, which could indeed be a spectacular failure across the board. But that doesn't make gambling venues unprofitable, it just means Konami is terrible at everything currently.
Honestly Konami's biggest problem is that they're going about things in an assholish way. In this environment, it makes perfect sense for a diverse company to leave AAA gaming -- it's absurdly expensive and risky. But the best way to have gone about that would have been to wait til MGS5 came out, then told Kojima of the new direction, and that he's absolutely welcome to make smaller games if he wished. That still would have resulted in the loss of Silent Hill and, well, games this board cares about. But doing things like this caused a massive explosion of bad PR and negative sentiment that could cut into sales.
We honestly need to stop saying that gambling venues don't work. Sega Sammy's primary income is through pachinko and pachislot machines. Konami I'm sure is on the lower end of profitable, but it's a sustainable business model if you know what you're doing.
What we're really questioning here is Konami's business model, which could indeed be a spectacular failure across the board. But that doesn't make gambling venues unprofitable, it just means Konami is terrible at everything currently.
Honestly Konami's biggest problem is that they're going about things in an assholish way. In this environment, it makes perfect sense for a diverse company to leave AAA gaming -- it's absurdly expensive and risky. But the best way to have gone about that would have been to wait til MGS5 came out, then told Kojima of the new direction, and that he's absolutely welcome to make smaller games if he wished. That still would have resulted in the loss of Silent Hill and, well, games this board cares about. But doing things like this caused a massive explosion of bad PR and negative sentiment that could cut into sales.
The other thing is they didn't take into account the the existence of 24-hour pseudo-media, that feeds off and fuels sensationalism and such. How much of this was fueled by leaks and speculation vs official statements and the like?
Not saying what they did was right but it's virtually impossible for an organization of their size to have made such maneuvers behind the scenes, and while the fact that their actions aren't the business of anyone outside of their organization, it's simply not possible to do things like this without at least pretending that it is everyone's business.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
We honestly need to stop saying that gambling venues don't work. Sega Sammy's primary income is through pachinko and pachislot machines. Konami I'm sure is on the lower end of profitable, but it's a sustainable business model if you know what you're doing.
What we're really questioning here is Konami's business model, which could indeed be a spectacular failure across the board. But that doesn't make gambling venues unprofitable, it just means Konami is terrible at everything currently.
Honestly Konami's biggest problem is that they're going about things in an assholish way. In this environment, it makes perfect sense for a diverse company to leave AAA gaming -- it's absurdly expensive and risky. But the best way to have gone about that would have been to wait til MGS5 came out, then told Kojima of the new direction, and that he's absolutely welcome to make smaller games if he wished. That still would have resulted in the loss of Silent Hill and, well, games this board cares about. But doing things like this caused a massive explosion of bad PR and negative sentiment that could cut into sales.
The other thing is they didn't take into account the the existence of 24-hour pseudo-media, that feeds off and fuels sensationalism and such. How much of this was fueled by leaks and speculation vs official statements and the like?
Not saying what they did was right but it's virtually impossible for an organization of their size to have made such maneuvers behind the scenes, and while the fact that their actions aren't the business of anyone outside of their organization, it's simply not possible to do things like this without at least pretending that it is everyone's business.
Jim Sterling has posted some pretty convincing videos that Konami frankly "doesn't know how to business." Google "Jimquisition Konami" to see the gory details.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I know we like to bag on Konami here, but the video poker business you're talking about has been making them money for a lot of years. Video gaming hasn't. They could make changes and turn that around, but they are making a decision that has some guaranteed results, borne out by their historical performance.
The figures Konami has produced for their gambling business are (as is typical for entertainment companies that try to diversify into that part of gaming) terrible. It's eclipsed easily twice over by their revenue from video games.
The revenue maybe, but the expenses incurred in the game development portion are far higher than their gambling side. It doesn't matter how much revenue I'm bringing in if my expenses are such that I never see a positive ROI.
And the gambling side is giving Konami an EBITDA that is some insane proportion higher than other software entertainment companies. As a business move, this makes sense.
As to the rest of what you're saying? Oh yeah, they're acting like a bag of dicks. But they're responding to shareholders as they are supposed to.
It's that time of the monthweek day again! An insider's leaked a lot of details to Nikkei and shocking news! Konami's a really, really, REALLY shitty company! Here's the story, though it's blocked by a pay wall and in moon language: http://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXMZO89986400R30C15A7000000/
Details are coming in from Serkan Toto and Thomas Jane on Twitter, here's some of the best bits:
The only shred that I'm slightly sympathetic to is the news that MGSV is at 80 fucking million dollars. Especially if it's true that that bill is mostly on Kojima. Making the best game you can is one thing, but if he was racking up the bill that high, I can absolutely see Konami shitting the proverbial brick. This has all the makings of one of the bigger financial flops of the year.
Everything else though... oh dear. I never gave a rats ass about the whole Silent Hills canceling. But this stuff... way to ensure that nobody will give a shit when you implode, Konami.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
$80 million alone looks huge but it's a pretty useless number without any context. Does it include marketing? If so then that'd be a significant portion of that. Does it exclude Ground Zeroes? If not then they've already made some of that budget back. You also have to take into account Fox Engine's development, which was always going to be a costly initial investment but would've set Konami up for the future.
I don't think there's much chance of it flopping, especially not when you take Ground Zeroes into account. We heard rumours of MGS4's budget being huge too and it was still hugely successful.
I wonder if they'd sell the MGS licence to anyone, as it sounds like they're ditching everything that would let them actually make another game with it.
Microsoft and Sony should have a competition to see how many digits they can fit on a bid.
Of course, I know they'll actually end up making a F2P mobile MGS game, but I can dream that someone just takes the license away from them. Like Child Protective Services, but for games.
$80mil is just slightly higher than a normal Western AAA title's costing budget, most of which have been in the $50-70mil range lately. Then again, there's anomalies like GTA5 and it's $265mil cost to make and market.
It also likely included Ground Zeroes. Though I wonder if that number includes building the Fox Engine.
$80mil is just slightly higher than a normal Western AAA title's costing budget, most of which have been in the $50-70mil range lately. Then again, there's anomalies like GTA5 and it's $265mil cost to make and market.
It also likely included Ground Zeroes. Though I wonder if that number includes building the Fox Engine.
Also, Destiny's $500 million... yow!
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
Of course, I know they'll actually end up making a F2P mobile MGS game, but I can dream that someone just takes the license away from them. Like Child Protective Services, but for games.
This. I think everyone expecting anything constructive, with any of Konami's properties involved, down the line is optimistic beyond reason.
The only shred that I'm slightly sympathetic to is the news that MGSV is at 80 fucking million dollars. Especially if it's true that that bill is mostly on Kojima. Making the best game you can is one thing, but if he was racking up the bill that high, I can absolutely see Konami shitting the proverbial brick. This has all the makings of one of the bigger financial flops of the year.
Everything else though... oh dear. I never gave a rats ass about the whole Silent Hills canceling. But this stuff... way to ensure that nobody will give a shit when you implode, Konami.
As others have said, this is in line (albeit on the high end) for normal production costs. Even if it weren't, though: it's not like Kojima had the Konami credit card and was racking-up charges, It's up to the publisher to decide how much money they're going to invest in a project. If they're super butthurt about having spent what is, again, a very typical figure for a production of this scale (including making an in-house engine. If that's included in the price, that's a steal for $80 million), there's only entity for Konami to be angry with - Konami (or whomever it was in the company that authorized the budget for MGS5).
That one former employee, upon announcing on Facebook that they were leaving Konami and had got a new job elsewhere, had their post monitored. Nikkei says remaining Konami staff who “liked” the post were all reshuffled within the company.
That one former employee, upon announcing on Facebook that they were leaving Konami and had got a new job elsewhere, had their post monitored. Nikkei says remaining Konami staff who “liked” the post were all reshuffled within the company.
Burn it all. Salvage nothing.
Like, this sounds hyperbolic at best. Whomever reported it would have to be upper management to know whether or not it's true.
CEO of a Tokyo-based game industry consultancy Serkan Toto has claimed Kojima's fall from grace occurred because MGS V was delayed.
If this is just talking about the delay from March to September, then -- holy fuck. I know it's a big title for the company and all, but it's not like he was missing Christmas. Or that the fate of the company depended on the game releasing right then.
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They should name the expanded edition Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Developer
HexaDrive did the ZoE2 PS3 patch.
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...How is that the stronger statement? It's not like Kojima is going to see a nickel of the proceeds from the game, so you're not really supporting him at all (in fact, you're probably supporting the project that ended his career), and the entire story of the game's production is one of rampant employee abuse & harassment of small press. If you're really so disgusted by Konami, one would think that you'd at least be able to say that the swan song of their antagonistic behavior in the industry isn't worth buying regardless of how good the marketing material has made it look thus far (or even how good the end product itself really is).
My speculation re: Konami is that someone sold the executives a bill of goods regarding gambling revenues. This happens in gaming-related companies (albeit I can't think of an instance as high profile as this one) on a pretty regular basis. Getting into video poker or slot machine production as a primary source of profit is a great way of going bankrupt overnight.
I know we like to bag on Konami here, but the video poker business you're talking about has been making them money for a lot of years. Video gaming hasn't. They could make changes and turn that around, but they are making a decision that has some guaranteed results, borne out by their historical performance.
It supports Kojima (less so if the whole "executive pay with fixed salary and no royalties from game" thing linked above is true), but more to the point, it supports every single worker in Kojima Productions who is now on contract under Konami, and they don't deserve being fucked any more than their employers have done so already.
The figures Konami has produced for their gambling business are (as is typical for entertainment companies that try to diversify into that part of gaming) terrible. It's eclipsed easily twice over by their revenue from video games.
If Konami was feeling the vidya game dooooom, they could've done any number of things to fix their problems: shifted to a model of production that doesn't focus on extremely high visual fidelity, like many smaller studios do, branched out into different development houses that each focus on a different project, collaborated with industry talent & other studios to spread-out the risk for larger projects, etc.
Instead they alienated the press, their customers, their business associates & partners, de-listed from the NYSE before their stock took the hit they knew was coming and have apparently gone all-in on a sucker's game. Even at the height of their popularity, slots & video poker were extremely risky ventures (it's Hella expensive to jump through all of the gaming regulatory hoops, and at the end of the day you're left with a product where your customer couldn't give two shits about your brand name or creativity); as demographics have turned over, the business as a whole has taken a really significant downturn.
Their actions just reek of desperate floundering.
Let's be real: those employees are going to be pink-slipped the moment that Konami can pink slip them. They've already received whatever pittance Konami was willing to pay for their work; selling copies of the game will not somehow make them more money. It strictly benefits the publisher, not the employees.
Unless I'm misremembering, it's been previously announced the team has gone to contract for this game only and are almost certain to be let go as soon as the game's finished.
1. Everyone that worked on the game can get points on the back end of release (but Kojima just chose not to)
2. Everyone that worked on the game gets paid for their time and a "get out" when it's done
I know for me, it'd be #1.
Yep.
Unless they're working for somebody awesome, it's not common at all for the grunt employees to get any kind of bonus from a game's performance. I'm guessing modern Konami isn't awesome.
Company: "The bonus is you get to keep your job after the project ends!"
Employees: "Yay!"
Or they'll do something that seems awesome when they offer it, but will gladly take any loophole they can get to asshole the employees out of money - especially if they can act like they're blameless in doing so. See: Bethesda and New Vegas.
And even in that case, the money was going to an independent studio itself so they could continue to employ people and make more projects. I don't think any of that bonus was earmarked to the grunts, unless I'm misremembering.
What we're really questioning here is Konami's business model, which could indeed be a spectacular failure across the board. But that doesn't make gambling venues unprofitable, it just means Konami is terrible at everything currently.
Konami, as a whole, remains profitable.
Honestly Konami's biggest problem is that they're going about things in an assholish way. In this environment, it makes perfect sense for a diverse company to leave AAA gaming -- it's absurdly expensive and risky. But the best way to have gone about that would have been to wait til MGS5 came out, then told Kojima of the new direction, and that he's absolutely welcome to make smaller games if he wished. That still would have resulted in the loss of Silent Hill and, well, games this board cares about. But doing things like this caused a massive explosion of bad PR and negative sentiment that could cut into sales.
The other thing is they didn't take into account the the existence of 24-hour pseudo-media, that feeds off and fuels sensationalism and such. How much of this was fueled by leaks and speculation vs official statements and the like?
Not saying what they did was right but it's virtually impossible for an organization of their size to have made such maneuvers behind the scenes, and while the fact that their actions aren't the business of anyone outside of their organization, it's simply not possible to do things like this without at least pretending that it is everyone's business.
Jim Sterling has posted some pretty convincing videos that Konami frankly "doesn't know how to business." Google "Jimquisition Konami" to see the gory details.
The revenue maybe, but the expenses incurred in the game development portion are far higher than their gambling side. It doesn't matter how much revenue I'm bringing in if my expenses are such that I never see a positive ROI.
And the gambling side is giving Konami an EBITDA that is some insane proportion higher than other software entertainment companies. As a business move, this makes sense.
As to the rest of what you're saying? Oh yeah, they're acting like a bag of dicks. But they're responding to shareholders as they are supposed to.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/11/killself.gif
Edit: changing this gif to a link before Tube suspends my account again...
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Who even are these ladies with Richter? Have they finally said "fuck it" and undone Maria's classy SOTN look?
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So when you get a good... (are they called rolls?) roll, do you hit a monster or undress a lady Castlevania character? Or is it both things?
I got a much more appropriate gif: http://i.imgur.com/a0QZwpP.gif
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Meh, it's been done before.
http://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXMZO89986400R30C15A7000000/
Details are coming in from Serkan Toto and Thomas Jane on Twitter, here's some of the best bits:
There's more tweets on both their pages, I'd recommend reading them both.
Edit: Thomas Jane collected all his Nikkei related tweets here:
http://togetter.com/li/855984
Everything else though... oh dear. I never gave a rats ass about the whole Silent Hills canceling. But this stuff... way to ensure that nobody will give a shit when you implode, Konami.
I don't think there's much chance of it flopping, especially not when you take Ground Zeroes into account. We heard rumours of MGS4's budget being huge too and it was still hugely successful.
Microsoft and Sony should have a competition to see how many digits they can fit on a bid.
Of course, I know they'll actually end up making a F2P mobile MGS game, but I can dream that someone just takes the license away from them. Like Child Protective Services, but for games.
It also likely included Ground Zeroes. Though I wonder if that number includes building the Fox Engine.
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Also, Destiny's $500 million... yow!
People confuse and frighten me. (I mean, the main writer/director of the series left in 2002! 2002! )
As others have said, this is in line (albeit on the high end) for normal production costs. Even if it weren't, though: it's not like Kojima had the Konami credit card and was racking-up charges, It's up to the publisher to decide how much money they're going to invest in a project. If they're super butthurt about having spent what is, again, a very typical figure for a production of this scale (including making an in-house engine. If that's included in the price, that's a steal for $80 million), there's only entity for Konami to be angry with - Konami (or whomever it was in the company that authorized the budget for MGS5).
Burn it all. Salvage nothing.
Like, this sounds hyperbolic at best. Whomever reported it would have to be upper management to know whether or not it's true.
If this is just talking about the delay from March to September, then -- holy fuck. I know it's a big title for the company and all, but it's not like he was missing Christmas. Or that the fate of the company depended on the game releasing right then.