VAMatt said:
It occurred to me when the firing happened. As I understand it, the guy burns through cash, refuses to take direction, and, consequently, made it very hard for Konami to turn a profit on his games. To the extent that my understanding of the situation is correct, I'd say they had no choice but to cut ties with him. |
No. Konami turned a handsome profit on every single one of Kojima's projects as far as I know. MGSV (the game that got him fired) likely made its development costs back in its first week on sale. It sold a total of over 6 million copies not including the definitive edition released last year. Apparently the development cost was $80m. Conservatively assuming they made $25 per copy sold, that's a $70M profit. Even more if that $80 million development cost included Ground Zeroes.
A few yeara ago, there was a change in Konami's leadership, and one of the new heads was far more profit driven than his predecessors. He was unwilling to give Kojima the time to make the games the way Kojima saw fit, and the relationship between Konami and Kojima crumbled to a point where they made his work life a living hell and forced a release date on him, forcing him to release an unfinished game in MGS V. He then was fired after the project was finished, and left to join Sony, who will gladly give Kojima everything he wanted from a publisher, and in return get great exclusives that are pretty much guaranteed to make a profit. He'll probably never leave.
