Konami (2014-present)

Konami

Why should we make more games from these franchises when we can milk the money out of them through pachinko machines? - Konami, probably.

Founded:	March 21, 1969
Founder:	Kagemasa Kozuki
Headquarters:	Ginza, Tokyo, Japan
Key people:	Kagemasa Kozuki (chairman) Takuya Kozuki (president) Kimihiko Higashio (vice president)
Website:	https://www.konami.com/

Konami Holdings Corporation, commonly called Konami (also mockingly called "Konmai", a term originating from a typo in GuitarFreaks 8th Mix and Drummania 7th Mix, which is often used when referring to bugs and mistakes in their games) is a Japanese entertainment company. While it develops and publishes media of various mediums (such as trading cards, anime, and even casinos and fitness clubs), they are most well-known for their video games.

Since 2014, Konami has shifted their focus from video game development into gambling business - in which they are familiar with before their entrance into the gaming industry in late 80s - although they are still sporadically releasing some games as well.

Why They Suck Now

NOTE: The main problem with Konami today is that they clearly aren't interested in gaming anymore and shifted their focus to other, "less costs, more profit" businesses. This is what caused all the problems mentioned in the following list:

They canceled many highly anticipated titles.
- After Silent Hills was canceled, tensions between Konami and Hideo Kojima rose. While what specifically happened between them hasn't been said publicly, it lead to them parting ways.
While they haven't completely abandoned console and PC gaming, they've shifted their focus towards mobile games, which are inferior to the former for no reason other than that they're cheaper to produce and make lots of money.
- In an effort to make gambling legal in Japan, they turned their most beloved franchises into pachinko machines after the titles failed to meet their critical and commercial expectations. For example, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 was met with mixed reviews and middling sales, and since then, with the exception of pachinko machines, a Netflix original animated series, and with the series being represented in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Konami has barely done anything with Castlevania.
- Also, ever since Silent Hills was canceled, the Silent Hill franchise went dormant for a while until they revealed a Silent Hill themed pachinko machine. They later announced two new Silent Hill games, with one being an episodic style game while the other is a reboot of the franchise.
- Something similar happened with Ganbare Goemon (known as Mystical Ninja outside of Japan), which, aside from two pachinko machines, hasn't had a proper entry since Ganbare Goemon: Tōkai Dōchū Ōedo Tengu ri Kaeshi no Maki, which was released for the Nintendo DS back in 2005.
- Even when they do make console games, they have been low-effort, hollow, mostly overpriced ones trying to sell on name recognition alone, not passionately crafted products, the most recent examples, of course, being Metal Gear Survive and Contra: Rogue Corps.
They treat their employees in abysmal ways. For example, when Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia's sales were poor, Konami demoted Koji Igarashi to a desk job.
They weren't willing to give Hideo Kojima credit for his work to the point where they removed his name and the Kojima Productions logo from the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain box art, banned him from winning at the Game Awards 2015 ceremony, and came to pretend he never worked there in the first place. In other words, they treated Hideo Kojima, one of the most important people in video games, as chopped liver. This is narcissism at its finest.
Many of their mobile games don't have any hacking protection. Unlike other online mobile games, which won't let you connect to their servers using hacked APKs, "Hacked" APKs of Konami games can be played online without any negative repercussions.
They dissolved Hudson Soft in 2012 and have done absolutely nothing with their franchises ever since (except for Bomberman).
- Speaking of Bomberman, Konami was the reason Bomberman: Act Zero was made, not Hudson.
They are often prone to copyright claiming videos about their games, even if it's just an unboxing video. The most infamous case of copyright infringement abuse from them is the time when they gave a copyright strike to Super Bunnyhop.
They don't seem to listen to criticism, regardless of how constructive it is.
They only care about money now, and it is the reason they've turned their most beloved franchises into pachinko machines and a lot of their games now suffer from microtransactions like Metal Gear Survive.
- In Metal Gear Survive, you either grind a lot or pay $10 in order to create a new save file.
Similar to Capcom, they shut down some of their subsidiaries, such as Team Silent to make room for Western developers.
They ruined their own franchises like Silent Hill (with the cancellation of Silent Hills), Castlevania (with Lords of Shadow 2), Metal Gear (with Survive), and Contra (with Rogue Corps).
They ignored their other franchises such as, Gradius (Parodius), Ganbare Goemon, Lethal Enforcers, Twin Bee, AirForce Delta, and many others. Most of the IPs mentioned here are dead (outside of pachinko machines).
They royally screwed up the beloved SAW franchise with the releases of Saw and SAW II: Flesh & Blood.
They don't even know how to publish good games based on television shows, as disastrous games such as Ben 10 Alien Force: The Rise of Hex prove.
They did a terrible job at promoting Blades of Time, as they only decided to announce the game a whopping three days after it came out! This unsurprisingly caused the game to sell extremely poorly.
They have taken stances against fan games based on their properties, just like Nintendo did. For example:
- They forced the developers of Shadow Moses, an Unreal Engine 4 remake of Metal Gear Solid, to cancel their game.
- They did the same thing with a remake of the first Castlevania game.
Hygiene standards at their official Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments were so poor and bad that they actually had to institute a mandatory hygiene clause in their rule books and penalize smelly players and players wearing dirty clothes.
They increased the payments in some of the BEMANI arcade games, as well as locking certain features in some of these games, such as Extra Stages and some Options in Dance Dance Revolution games now requiring additional credits to access.
Speaking of BEMANI they did a horrible job on localizing Pop'n Music for western audiences.
- They made Beat'n Groovy which was a really bad Rip-off of the beloved game and failed.
- Then they made a complete reboot of Pop'n Music for the Nintendo Wii that completely changes the gameplay of the original series and also failed.'
- Because of that they never bothered to make another Pop'n Music game for North America again after the failure of those two games.

Redeeming Qualities

Konami used to be good and has a rich history of many top-quality games that can still be enjoyed.
Despite what they did with Kojima, he thanked them because they're the reason who he is today.
To celebrate their 50th anniversary, they released three collections: Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection, Castlevania Anniversary Collection & Contra Anniversary Collection for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Microsoft Windows. The latter two even include a bonus book explaining some facts about the games.
They still make great music arcade games under the BEMANI brand.
Unlike EA, they still put their games on Nintendo consoles also, which shows they and Nintendo have a better relationship than them.
They don't milk the Winning Eleven/Pro Evolution Soccer series, and they aren't filled with rampant microtransactions unlike the FIFA series, and they often run special events where you can get things like 5 star agents, coins (the game's premium currency), GP, and more without paying a dime, and the luck of getting a good player with an Agent is far better than FIFA's slim chances of getting a good player in packs. Also, the ratings and box art of eFootball Winning Eleven/PES 2021 SEASON UPDATE alone look better than FIFA 21. Also, they reduced the price of eFootball PES 2021 SEASON UPDATE on purpose because of the fact that due to COVID-19, they didn't have time to create a fully new PES game, so they made a reskin of 2020 with updated rosters, and reduced the price to $30 instead of $60, which is already better than FIFA 21.