Konami has been going down the drain for years.
I'd say that their golden age was a solid one lasting from about 2001 to 2008. Sure, Konami made games like Contra and Castlevania before that, but in those 12 years, they were one of the biggest names in the industry.
- 2001 - Zone of the Enders, Metal Gear Solid 2, Silent Hill 2, Shadow of Memories, Circle of the Moon
- 2002 - Suikoden 3, Harmony of Dissonance
- 2003 - Silent Hill 3, Lament of Innocence, Aria of Sorrow, Zone of the Enders 2, Boktai
- 2004 - Metal Gear Solid 3, Winning Eleven International, Silent Hill 4, MGS: Twin Snakes, Gradius V, Metal Gear Acid
- 2005 - Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, Dawn of Sorrow
- 2006 - Winning Eleven 2007, MGS Portable Ops, Elebits, Portrait of Ruin, Lunar Knights
- 2007 - Silent Hill Origins, Dracula X Chronicles, Contra 4
- 2008 - Metal Gear Solid 4 and Online, Gradius Rebirth, Order of Ecclesia
I'd say things went wrong mostly in the four or so years following the release of MGS4. first of all, Winning Eleven becoming obscure compared to FIFA was a huge loss. The 2007 edition (that came out in 2006) sold over 6.5 million copies, a few thousand copies more than FIFA sold that year. The 2014 edition (from 2013) sold about 1.8 million compared to FIFA's 16.5 million. Sure, you can blame EA's quality for some of the loss, but Konami's failure to keep their big annual series at a high quality is egregious.
Second, I'd say that some of the older series were not handled well. The GBA and DS had a total of 6 new Metroid-like Castlevania games within 8 years. Why then did the series get abandoned for half a decade? The DS games had fairly consistent sales at a low cost. Silent Hill was sent from one developer to the next, with no real team ever made for that series. The abysmal handling of the 2012 releases was probably the nail in the coffin.
If Konami wants to be the Metal Gear company, that could be acceptable. But even Metal Gear was handled poorly after 2008. I understand that Kojima wanted to make Peace Walker a PSP game, but considering how the MGS series was always more popular in the West, Konami should have had a port for consoles ready at Day 1, not part of a collection released over a year later. Even as a $40 budget release, or $50 with extra features, selling Peace Walker on a platform people played games on should have been obvious.
The 3DS port of MGS3 was if anything a bigger mess. MGS3 sounds like a decent fit for the 3DS, but considering how demanding the original game was and how development seems to have been understaffed, perhaps they should have simply ported over Peace Walker instead. It would have been far easier on the 3DS hardware and would sell to people without a PSP. Of course, the release of the MGS collection a few months earlier negated that, but the point still stands. Though speaking of which, why wasn't the 3DS exclusive stuff ever brought to the HD collection? This way, neither game was the definitive version, and the 3DS version probably was a waste of money.
Speaking of the HD Collection... huh? I understand the appeal of PS2 games in HD compilations, but this was a mess. 2 and 3 were good choices, but why exclude Peace Walker from the Vita version? You know, the closest thing that poor game would have to a native platform. Why even make a Vita version if you need an additional dev to help and can't even include a third of the package? And if you are going to release the two old non-Solid games along with the PS2 duo, why is the first MGS missing? That would be like Nintendo making a Zelda compilation for the GameCube that only includes the NES and N64 games! And even what is kept is not always intact. MGS2 Substance content remains intact, but a lot of Subsistence extras for MGS3 are missing. I can understand online play, but why are the Theater, Boss Survival, and Monkey modes missing?
Last, Metal Gear Rising. This was probably the best handled game from Konami after 2008, but its development was questionable. The game was first shown at E3 2009 and not released until 2013. It required a new engine and started with a team with minimal expertise in the Action genre. The game was actually cancelled for a few months in late 2010 and early 2011 before Platinum was brought in. The final product turned out fine, but the Konami spent about two years of time and an unknown amount of money on Rising before Platinum games remade the game for them. Konami got lucky.
Love and tolerate.
