During the week of PSX, Kojima was supposed to have been in California attending The Game Awards. Unfortunately, Konami prevented Kojima from attending the awards with the rest of his peers and so Kojima remained in Japan watching the stream live. While this led to a massive backlash from fans across the world as they rallied around Kojima on Twitter, may this have had a further implication for Kojima and Sony?
A few days after the Game Awards, PSX also took place in California. Had Kojima have attended the TGAs, it would certainly be a possibility that Kojima would drop by the huge PlayStation Expo if just to meet and greet some Metal Gear fans. Now we’re just speculating here, but what if Konami threw a real curve ball into the mix? By preventing Kojima from attending the TGA awards, did Konami also ruin a blockbuster announcement on Sony’s part? It may have been pure coincidence but perhaps this was Konami twisting the knife in the back of Kojima once more before his final departure, and perhaps that’s why Sony’s keynote at PSX ended rather abruptly.
The keynote wasn’t necessarily lacking some big hitting reveals that had PlayStation fans cheering at their monitors. The likes of Final Fantasy VII, the Uncharted 4 announcement and Ni No Kuni 2 were definitely the killer announcements of the conference, but from the way that some industry insiders were talking about the announcements to be made at PSX a few weeks before, we expected something a little more. Had Kojima walked out with Andrew House at the end, Kojima Productions’ new logo slapped on the big screen, it certainly would have raised people’s opinions of the keynote speech.
Unfortunately, the keynote ended on an announcement that while exciting, didn’t feel like it had the oomph behind it that the big announcements we mentioned earlier did. This could perhaps suggest that Konami’s aforementioned curveball, preventing Kojima from attending the TGAs meant that Sony was left without its announcement to round out the keynote. Of course, we must acknowledge the fact that Kojima could always have hopped on a plane for just PSX, but it does seem coincidental.
Revealing Epic Games, a developer strongly linked with Xbox, and Kojima Productions, a studio with a stellar reputation one after the other would have been more of a killer blow to Microsoft and really had fans losing their minds. Introducing these final two announcements as “Two new developers joining the PlayStation family,” rather than Epic Games just walking out would certainly have rounded the conference out in a much cleaner way. What we were instead left with was an abrupt ending to a keynote of rare high’s and more frequent meh’s.
Moving on from PSX and leading up to the announcements, When you tweet out a photo with one of the most sought out creators in the gaming industry, you’re certainly hinting that some strong bonds are being made, or already present. That’s exactly what Mark Cerny of PlayStation Studios Japan did back in October.
Was this photo a gentle suggestion that a deal was already being hashed out between Kojima and Sony? The fact that Cerny is one of the head honcho’s of Sony over in Japan would suggest that it was down to him to try and nail down Kojima with Sony in whatever way he could. It wasn’t likely that Kojima and his new studio would come on as an exclusive Sony developer through and through, but it would definitely want to make some kind of tie with the Metal Gear Solid creator.
So why wait until PSX to make the announcement? Well in an interview with Kinda Funny’s Colin Moriarty, PlayStation America’s Scott Rohde stated, “This is not a corporate announcement show. This is fan love.” If you ask us, announcing that Kojima’s first game following his departure from Konami is to be exclusive on a PlayStation platform is one of the biggest, hardcore announcements a company could make and one which Shuhei Yoshida, Rohde, and their equals at Sony would have been proud to showcase.
And then we’ve got the whole point already mentioned that it felt like something was missing in the PlayStation Experience Keynote. We’re not trying to make any harsh comments towards Epic Games and their upcoming title Paragon, but it did seem like a rather odd and lackluster way to end the keynote speech.
All of this is just speculation, and for now that’s all we can do. The true story about the Konami- Kojima split and all of the dirty details will probably take a good few years to leak and until then the truth will remain hidden. But for now, let’s just enjoy the fact that one of the creative gods of the industry is back in action.
So what do you think? Do you think the announcement was supposed to be made at PSX? Let us know in the comments below.
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