When Shinji Enomoto, operating officer at Konami and head of its consumer software section, talks about turning points for his company, one stands out pretty well above the others."We had a mission to make a title that could appeal globally, and I remember gathering up all the best talent within our company to tackle that,"he toldFamitsumagazine in an interview published this week."The resultingMetal Gear Solidseries has grown into one with massive fan support; it established the Hideo Kojima brand. It gave us the confidence that Konami could fend for itself on the global market."
It's that ability to fend for itself globally that Konami and Enomoto want to expand upon in the coming years, which has forced them to re-evaluate the Japanese game-development method extensively."A lot of game makers in Japan enter the business developing consumer games with tools they receive from the hardware manufacturers,"Enomoto said."Most creators in the US and Europe, meanwhile, start with PC games and move on to consoles with tools they've developed themselves. So in Japan, if a designer wants to check the motion he's just built, he needs to get a programmer to work on it, whereas with Western systems the designer can do all the checking himself and proceed along that way. If we had the same amount of time and personnel to create a game with, a Japanese team would need three-fourths of that time to make the graphics, where it'd be about half for an overseas team. That's a major difference in the amount of brush-up time you have, and Japanese companies are starting to pay attention to that as they streamline their development process."
NeverDead(above), the Rebellion-developed action project Konami first showed off at E3 last year, is part of that streamlining effort."The theme here is to see what would happen if you combined their more efficient technical knowledge with Japan's game-design powers,"Enomoto explained."We can really feel that happening as we work alongside them, and the result is that we can realize Japan's game-design skills at a much higher technical level. Bringing that know-how back to Japan at the end of it will help us change how game creation works at Konami."
What's next for the industry in general? A lot of pretty graphics, Enomoto says -- that, and a lot of cost."We'll see a new generation of hardware within five years of the NGP's release,"he said."I saw a demo of DirectX 11 at the Game Developers Conference earlier, and while there was just a little bit of uncanniness to it, the person on the display was in no way inferior to real life. I don't think we'll be able to tell the difference from real life at all within five years. By that point, we'll be talking 'interactive Hollywood films,' although just thinking about how much it'll cost to develop those games gives me the chills!"
To deal with those higher costs, Enomoto sees for-pay downloadable content as not only a nice bonus, but an indispensable part of a publisher's strategy."Making a game requires a vast amount of time and money,"he said,"but if that game gets bad reviews from gamers on the day of release, then that's essentially it for that title. Even if you want to reflect user criticism in your new game, that takes another vast amount of time and money. It's one thing if you're expecting the game to be a hit, but the risks of working with original property will make pay-based DLC an effective way to go, I think."
It seems to be the way the industry is going, and Enomoto's ready for it -- that, and for a final, ultimate end to the console wars."Eventually, I think net-based streaming services will take center stage,"he concluded."The servers will take the role of the hardware, so the concept of specialized hardware will go away -- and since the data's on the server side as well, you'll be able to play the same game on both your large-screen at home and your smartphone on the go. The net connection will allow the games to go social, too, and it's really an ideal environment for us."
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