Hideo Kojima and Konami Have Falling Out, Kojima Productions Branding Dead?
Some big gaming news is rumbling through the industry right now: it appears Konami is going through a restructuring right now and want the Konami branding front and center, instead of other studio names like Kojima Productions. As part of this, they’re renaming Kojima Productions LA Studio to Konami Los Angeles Studio, and the “A Hideo Kojima game” branding on Metal Gear Solid V ads and website has been removed. According to Gamespot and their anonymous source, the restructuring has resulted in a power struggle between Kojima Productions and Konami, the latter of whom has embargoed corporate internet, emails, and phone of KojiPro. Kojima and other senior studio staff are essentially only on as contractors now, and plan to leave once their contract is up in December. Gamespot goes into more details here, but suffice to say, it appears Kojima and Konami won’t be working together after MSGV.