Gaming
Konami Apologizes to fans for Confusion, Promises Console Support
Konami has reached out to fans through Polygon to apologize for causing anxiety & promise continued support for consoles & PC
If your a fan of Konami games or follow the gaming world closely then you’ve seen the storm of controversy surrounding the famous developer. Starting off with the alleged firing of Hideo Kojima the mastermind behind the Metal Gear Solid Series, followed by the cancelling of the much anticipated Silent Hills title. If that wasn’t enough the companies newly appointed president has suggested that they switch their focus solely to the mobile market. Overall it has been a roller coaster ride for Konami and its fans that the company is trying to clear up.
Today they reached out to Polygon with a letter apologizing to fans, that tries to explain what has really been going on at Konami and why they shouldn’t worry. In the letter they are quick to apologize for the confusion that all the recent changes the company has made caused. Saying “We are aware that the conjecture surrounding our recent changes has prompted a great deal of anxiety, for which we apologize,” Going onto say that quotes from a recent interview “lacked the necessary context and caused unrest within our key stakeholders including our community, members of the press, our partners and our fans”
Throughout the rest of the letter that Konami translated for Polygon to post on their site tried to give fans the truth behind everything that has been happening. Stressing that when president Hideki Hayakawa said they would begin focusing on “mobile first” he did not mean leaving consoles and PC behind. Instead he was trying to explain the companies desire to react to swift changes in the market quickly by branching out to mobile devices. Specifically they want to move away from just making games to making add on content that stretches across every device we use.
After touching on the “mobile first” controversy Konami touched on an even bigger hot button issue, what happened with Silent Hills and Kojima. Saying that in March they introduced a new centralized production division system designed to make a clear distinction between management and creative roles.
Explaining that “Until now, in addition to game development duties, our creators were handling a wide range of responsibilities including managerial roles. This can be a helpful approach when a studio concentrates on progressively specializing in a specific style of product, but we have found that a sudden market shift can render that specialization invalid and leave the studio unable to keep up.”
Suggesting that they had tried to remove Kojima from the Metal Gear Solid creative team and place him in a strictly managerial position. An idea that likely didn’t sit well with Kojima who has said he left Konami behind by choice. Company president Hayakawa was quick to say that even with these changes they are still dedicated to the Silent Hills and Metal Gear Solid franchises. If that and anything else the company said in the letter to Polygon are true is still up in the air.
Source: Polygon
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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