Metal Gear Solid series composer Rika Muranaka might know the real reason why Hideo Kojima and Konami parted ways, and, of course, it all boils down to money.
On the The Codec Podcast, co-host Daley claims he had an interview with Muranaka, in which she explained that essentially, Kojima was spending more money on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain than Konami wanted to spend. The explanation begins at around 1:45:00 in the above video.
The main reason for the falling out, at least in her opinion, is that Kojima gets paid a salary, and doesn’t make any profit share on the game. He gets paid a certain amount no matter what, and he was spending so much money and delaying the project, and adding all these features and making sure the game was the biggest and best thing it could be, and Konami was unhappy with that because [delaying] has no effect on him. He was spending the budget on this and that and upgrading the Fox Engine and then delaying further because the engine wasn’t ready, and Konami wasn’t happy with that because he gets his salary and he takes a more traditional “Japanese man” approach by not taking a profit share. So in doing that, he gets a little more than a game creator would but doesn’t take bonuses from the game selling well.
In other MGS news, some fans have released a few videos that are meant to get fans up to date on the MGS series before taking on The Phantom Pain. The videos show off cut-scenes and gameplay, and will take you a whopping 28 hours to actually watch. Still, it’s a lot shorter than actually playing through all the MGS games, but a lot longer than just Googling a short synopsis.
What do you think about the the possible reason why Kojima and Konami split? Do you think you will watch all of those above MGS videos?
[Source: Yong Yea (YouTube) via Reddit, Destructoid, Kefka Production (YouTube) via VG247]
