Over the past couple of days, rumors have circulated suggesting that Konami was officially exiting the triple-A development scene. However, that appears to not be the case.

French site Gameblog reported that worldwide technology director Julien Merceron had left the company and that Konami had no plans to continue developing triple-A games besides Pro Evolution Soccer. Konami, on the other hand, seems to have different plans. Su-Yina Farmer, community manager at Konami Europe, took to Twitter yesterday to voice her thoughts.

“I hope re-purposing speculation and rumour as news isn’t the new standard.”

Konami customer support echoes this sentiment. A user on Reddit opened a support ticket and inquired about the future of both Metal Gear Solid and the future of the Fox Engine. The full response can be found here, but what follows is the main point.

“I can promise you that we’re definitely not leaving Metal Gear behind or anything like that. I know some blogs were claiming that online this morning, but I’m not really sure where they’d be getting that from.

We’re still definitely working on console games and franchises such as Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Castlevania, PES and all the rest.

Finally, Konami is still recruiting staff for a new Metal Gear project. It may be tempting for some to write this off a simply a mobile game or pachinko machine, but the recruitment page itself references experience in “high-end game development.”

We’re waiting on a press release from Konami before we made any claims about Konami’s future, but as of now it seems that reports of their death have been greatly exaggerated.

http://throwingdigitalsheep.com/konami-exiting-triple-a-space/

Two points need to be made.

First, customer support and community management often know nothing beyond the information feed to them. We've seen countless examples of that.

Second, people have been taking the speculation as fact, which is silly.

So, everyone is wrong and we still don't know anything.

Konami have it easy. Kojima pretty much gave them a free ticket to remake Metal Gear 1 and 2 in the Fox Engine with the uh... 'story changes' that would need to take place.

I remember reading about how Dragon Collection changed their perception of the market though - they made a huge amount of money from very low dev costs, and that's why they've been chasing the mobile bubble ever since.

I think the Konami who green lit things like Beyond the Labyrinth; Death Jr.; Lost in Blue; Metal Gear Ac!d etc. is long gone. But that's not exclusive to Konami really, that's today's market for you.

Whether Silent Hill; Suikoden and Metal Gear live on is the big question, imo. And it will be interesting to see what they do in the coming years.

There was a gun and people were jumping.

Its more of a bandwagon. Your being to nice.

OK

There was a gun, a bandwagon and a ramp.

Good enough.

On a serious note, people are choosing to be irrational in regards to KONAMI. 

Gameblog isn't really just some blog though.

But I guess they put one and the other into another subject.,

I don't even know what to believe anymore.. >_>

Has Hideo officially announced his departure? MGS will never be the same without him.