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More on Konami’s business plans: clear divide between management and creative roles

Website Gamesindustry.biz has provided some more details on Konami’s future business plans, as explained by their new representative director Hideki Hayakawa.

Recently I hear the phrase ‘mobile first’ a lot, but for our company, ‘mobile first’ doesn’t mean just doing mobile. Rather, it means that we will combine the use of mobile, the platform which is closest to our customers, with consoles, arcade games and card games, construct a portfolio, expand the styles of play and our customer base.

I’m going to clearly divide management and creative roles. Up until now, creative roles have been very broad, covering even the management of the organisation. I think that really focusing deeply on one project is a strong approach, but if an entirely different trend emerges then you’re left unable to leverage those skills or cope with it.

As head of Kojima Productions, Kojima was in charge of the creative side and the business side at the same time. However, it seems that with Konami’s restructuring there will be a new type of strategy that leaves no room for such a autonomous studio within Konami. This could explain why Kojima Productions has been disbanded.

The policy of expanding our IP beyond games is one such thing; moving from home consoles to mobiles is the same. In the new system, people in management will be able to decide how best to exploit all our resources, and thoroughly create a strategy. Then they can execute that alongside the creative people. That’s how we’re going to do things from now on.

It remains to be seen if Konami will be the right place for Kojima with these changes. This could also explain the rumored fallout between him and the company, but for now that remains speculation.

Kojima-Interview-June-30-2

Source: Nikkei Trendy, via GameIndustry.biz

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