Deer Rest FOA wrote:
I agree that 4: The Room was interesting. I'm very sad that Konami fired Team Silent at the peak of their success. The amount of respect that we fans still have for this group of passionate horror fans who created the best survival horror titles of yesteryear that will hold a place in our hearts (and game collection) hopefully forever. Not so much the crap we got with Homecoming and Downpour (even though they aren't as awful as say, Umbrella Corps, I don't really like them as much).
Well technically following SH2, SH3 and SH4 saw sales declines.
The original team was aware, which is why they were trying to branch out with 4 and change things up.
Since the majority of sales came from the west, Konami thought getting western devs would work. And thus the team wasn't fired, but disbanded and sent off to other areas of Konami.
So there was logic to their decision. But unfortunately it didn't turn out great. As time went on, Konami was branching out into many other avenues and the people up top stopped caring for the console gaming side, particularly in light of the Japanese market dropping off, and the mobile boom. The Hollywood movies also didn't light the world on fire.
It'd be nice if Konami kept Team Silent around as a prestige team. But outside of Sony and Ubisoft, there's not much support at big publishers for the smaller artistic affairs. And other pubs like EA and Microsoft tend to just buy up publishing rights to external indies when they see a chance. 3rd Party Devs are responsible to shareholders, in this regard, Ubisoft is an anomaly. Sony, by virtue of being the platform holder can take the risks to make their console attractive as the bulk of their income comes from third parties. Therefore Sony can afford affairs like the Last Guardian and a Gravity Rush to fill out the roster.
Ideally it'd be better if the members of Team Silent left Konami and joined either Kojima or Sony. But it's understandable that many want the job/pension security Konami provides and in Japan people tend to largely be loyal to the company. So they might not want to risk going off unless they feel very oppressed or are shoved out. Some like Ito went freelance, Yamaoka joined Grasshopper, or some like Toyama jumped ship years ago under more favourable conditions. There has been an exodus of to Kojima Productions, but those were largely already working for him under the old KojiPro.