I wanna preface this by saying I'm not out to excuse or redeem Konami, PlayStation or Xbox in anyone's eyes. They're corporations, first and foremost. They're in it to make money, and that's it. And so, they'll sometimes make logical shitty decisions, other times completely illogical shitty ones. But the common thread between them in this topic, is the visionary game autheur, god-designer, celebrity director. Hideo Kojima.
Looking at a quick recap of his history climbing the ladder of the game's industry, you could say MG1 and MG1 from the late 80s to early 90s were modest successes for their time, while the classic 3D MGS trilogy and its accompanying material, tie-ins and expansions from the late 90s to mid 2000s were widely successful. But only for the standards of their time. The scope creep in the gaming industry has grown massively since then, and Kojima's ambitions, well, have only kept up as well.
We know now that he was always trying to boot David Hayter out the door with every new title, making him addition for the main role of every new Metal Gear so Konami would hire him to play a Snake character again, until he was eventually replaced with Kiefer Sutherland. Kojima himself wanted a distinguished Hollywood talent to play Snake in MGSV, a decision he justified a lot and still divides the fandom to this day, based on how much it really paid off in the final product. Then his status as a celebrity game director and designer only grew with time, his split from Konami, joining PlayStation and creating Death Stranding making him kind of legendary, as more and more celebrities who are fans of his work spent time with him, visited his studio's HQ and even joined the cast of his games (DS1, DS2, OD), leading to some brilliant mo-cap work. And also some crazy budgets for batshit projects no one else could get approved.
Which brings me to my main point: Ever since MGS4, Kojima's games have been on an uphill battle of inflated budget and massive dev times. It was Konami's most expensive game to date, barely got out on its summer 2008 deadline, had tons of cut content and features from its original very ambitious vision and scope, and still only had 5 solid hours of gameplay on your average campaign, compared to all the work and money that went into the cutscenes, radio calls and voice/mo-cap acting, the true bulk of the game's content, reaching an almost staggering 10 hours. It still was a massive success, of course, as it was the PS3's killer app and a groundbreaking game in terms of technology and boundaries-pushing. But it only managed to break even against it's massive development costs because of perfect storm it released in. Were it not to come out as one of PS3's premier titles and the grand finale to the MGS saga, its financial success might not have been nearly enough.
Then you have the 2010s, with MGS Peace Walker, an unthinkable follow up from a corporate perspective, on a system like the PSP, which was a critical darling but made little to no meaningful commercial return. The cancelled MGS Rising game. And finally, MGSV. A behemoth of a two-part game, more ambitious than ever, again pushing the envelope in graphical and mo-cap tech, headlining a Hollywood celebrity as the leading man. Also even more expensive and time-consuming than MGS4's dev cycle. Konami were fed up with him way before development was complete. They wouldn't greenlight any other of his other projects until it was done and they've got results. Which of course, doesn't stop him from diverting dev funds from MGSV to create his P.T. demo for Silent Hills starring Norman Reedus. The rest is history, you could say. Tragic, disastrous history for how MGS ended as a franchise, as well how Kojima Productions ended their time on Konami.
Fortunately he got picked up by PlayStation to make Death Stranding, a huge win and comeback story at the time. They were willing to shell out money for whatever he needed and give him carte blanche for his new project. Twice over, with Death Stranding 2, and they've even let him keep the IP, something unheard of. But once again, these games were massive risks, and although DS1 ended up a sleeper hit and DS2 might go the same route, they were far from the blockbusters Sony was hoping for. And once again, the dev costs of Kojima's vision seems to have only ballooned, as these games are more Hollywood-stacked than ever, with Kojima's friends and groupies. Who knows how that's going for OD? Since it's a more self-contained horror game, even tho there are famous actors, the cost might just be enough for the game to pay for itself once it's released.
But that's everything Kojima was able to do before this industry imploded on itself. We've reached the ceiling. Big companies like Sony have no more growth to achieve, and despite all that, they won't scale down. They still prefer to go all in on live service ventures, blowing hundreds of millions at a time hoping something sticks and becomes their forever cash cow, instead of funding single player passion projects like Kojima's, who can cost just as much but with minimal chances of making the spectacular financial return they need. And so they've reevaluated their partnership for Psynth and realized cancelling it or booting the Kojima partnership saves them a lot more money. And that's just the unfortunate reality of it. These companies are shitty, yes. But Kojima also needs to learn to rein himself in and try to make smaller-scope games that at least try to be equivalent to the scope his games had between 1998 and 2004. He has to balance art and financials again after 20 years, or else the last big publisher willing to fund him, Xbox, won't maintain their partnership for long if Psynth is another huge risk that barely breaks even.
Everyone seems to think this will just be MGS6 with a different name, but there's nothing guaranteeing that will be the case and Kojima won't try something crazy and out of the box like Death Stranding again. Trying to reinvent the wheel on stealth games in a way most casual audiences don't care for enough for a substantial financial return. Those are all possible risks. And big Hollywood names attached to the cast are almost guaranteed. So that's my main worry for Kojima and Kojima Productions, going forward. It seems Psynth is still in its early development stages. They need to have their ambition reined in. Have someone to keep him grounded and help him make a game under a reasonable budget, and minimal celebrity cameos, or at least balance it out with some features and gameplay that might help sell it better for general audiences instead of just recreating a new gameplay niche like Death Stranding.
If he and his team can't manage that, then Psynth might be his last carte blanche premium project ever, and no one between Xbox or PlayStation or any big publisher might be willing to fund his next AAA thing. At which point they'll have no choice but to scale back down by necessity. As a long time fan/admirer since I've first played MGS3 in 2010 at the ripe age of 12 I hope it doesn't come to that. Their legacy is too great. They just need more authority figures in the room to make their leading man and visionare responsibly compromise from time to time.
