As the trend of mobile continues to surge, one iconic game developer thinks that younger people are simply not as enamored with big budget releases as they used to be.
Hideo Kojima, known for the legendary Metal Gear Solid series, revealed how the shift in the gaming landscape is due to the changing interests of what gamers are more focused on today (namely social media). “We’ve seen a phenomenon around the world. Young people are losing interest in high-end games and focusing on mobile and social titles, especially in Japan” he states.
Certainly an interesting perspective considering many analysts fail to factor in overseas culture and habits into their market research.
No stranger to multi-million dollar releases himself, Kojima has recently had to contend with controversy surrounding the release of Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeros (with complaints that the story mode was a bit short). He touches on what led to the game being split up into multiple parts in the first place (with Phantom Pain forthcoming), staying: “I’ll be honest, splitting MGSV up wasn’t necessarily a strategic move. The Phantom Pain is roughly 200 times bigger than Ground Zeroes . A game that big wouldn’t be ready for next-gen launch windows, and we didn’t have any Japanese titles that would be available.” He says.
Ultimately, the decision to release Ground Zeroes in its current state was due to fan demand, which resulted in it acting as the prologue to the upcoming larger title of Phantom .