Kojima officially free of Konami, will open new studio

Hideo Kojima’s lengthy post-Konami troubles may be over, as the Japanese Nikkei writes that he has officially departed from the company as of 15 December.

Though Kojima had pretty much parted ways with Konami at a much earlier date, the publisher was still enacting a certain level of control over his activities; most recently, preventing him from attending the Game Awards. There was also a brief period where Konami were claiming that Kojima wasn’t leaving, and was simply “on holiday” (perhaps technically true if he was using up mandated leave before departing for good, but semantically quite misleading).

According to the short Nikkei piece, translated by a Japanese-speaker over at NeoGaf, Kojima will be forming a new company, where he will “continue developing video games”.

The piece adds that many of those who worked with him at Konami (under Kojima Productions) will be on board, and that negotiations are underway with Sony for the game to “debut” on the PS4. Initial translations suggested that new Kojima titles would be in some way PlayStation exclusive, but more recent efforts (including the NeoGaf one linked above) appear to indicate that the door is open for PC versions as well.

It won’t be a Metal Gear Solid title, as the rights to that series are owned by Konami. Unless, of course, they fancy licensing them to Kojima in an utterly hilarious twist.