Hideo Kojima leaving Konami has seemingly caused more damage than we thought. Today, the Japanese developer behind Metal Gear, Contra, and Silent Hill announced that Kojima and Guillermo del Toro’s Silent Hills has been canceled.
Things weren’t looking so hot for Silent Hills after Konami announced that P.T., the now infamous teaser for the game, was to be pulled off PSN soon. Afterwards, Tweets from a reporter at a del Toro event and from Norman Reedus, who was set to star in the game, made it all but official. Now, Konami has confirmed the game’s demise.
Konami’s statement to the press is as follows:
Konami is committed to new Silent Hill titles, however the embryonic ‘Silent Hills’ project developed with Guillermo del Toro and featuring the likeness of Norman Reedus will not be continued.
In terms of Kojima and Del Toro being involved, discussions on future Silent Hill projects are currently underway, and please stay tuned for further announcements.
It’s unknown what Konami’s plans are for future Silent Hill games, but just after canceling Hills, they delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. We have no idea if del Toro will be returning to games anytime soon, especially after his last attempted project, Insane, went under with THQ. If you don’t have P.T. downloaded, now would be the time to do so.
It’s unfortunate to see it happen, but given Konami (and a lot of the Japanese market) moving towards mobile games (which have cheaper development costs) it makes sense. MGSV has been in development long enough that it makes sense to finish and ship out, but this game seems like it was in early development at best.
Coupled with the ongoing Kojima insanity going on behind the scenes, it makes sense this game is canned. Hopefully after MGSV gets released and the smoke blows over we’ll see some answers about what happened here.