A new website for Kojima Productions has popped up, seemingly confirming reports from Nikkei that Hideo Kojima has formally left Konami and set up his own independent studio (translation courtesy of Polygon).
The new website is a little barebones at the moment. The main page features some philosophy about the nature of play and how it ties to the nature of human creation and evolution. Yep, that’s definitely written by Hideo Kojima. There’s also a video by Andrew House of Sony Computer Entertainment announcing a close partnership with Hideo Kojima, as well as video by the man himself. This may suggest that Kojima Productions will be working closely alongside Sony, much like Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games have in the past as sort-of-but-not-quite first party developers. You can see the video here:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZfB-lNSR5E]There’s also a pretty barebones press release promising that Kojima Productions will be developing products “that will push the boundaries in innovation and ignite consumer interest worldwide.”
Finally, there’s a pretty standard career listing for your usual video game fare: UI artist, lead programmer, concept artist, level designer, and so on, but the actual job postings are in Japanese at the moment, so what exactly Kojima is cooking up will remain a mystery for the moment.
This studio opening may explain why Konami has been systematically removing “Kojima Productions” from all of its boxart and marketing for Metal Gear Solid, since this new “Kojima Productions” does not appear to be in any way affiliated with Konami. It’ll likely be a while before anything concrete comes out of this, but at least Mr. Kojima is alright.