Whoever spoke from the US arm of Konami‘s PR department should be hiding now: we seem to be edging closer to Sony and Konami announcing the return of Silent Hill.

We’re not even going to recap all the previous rumours, but go immediately to the post by AestheticGamer on ResetEra (as Dusk Golem): „To my understanding, the situation is a bit of a unique one. [Keiichiro] Toyama (the director of the first Silent Hill) has good standing in the company because he’s polite, professional, talented, and can do a lot with meagre budgets. That said, neither the Siren or Gravity Rush games set the world on fire, they did make back money but neither were smash-out hits. Toyama wants to do another horror game, and Sony is completely fine with that, but if it was a new (Forbidden) Siren game or a new IP, the actual budget would have to be on the slimmer side due to past performance indicating while both will do fine, neither would probably break out of a niche.

So enter in Konami about two years ago hunting for developers to develop two Silent Hill games. I wish I had a better understanding of how talks even began because that’s a huge missing piece, but somehow or another Sony had the thought and talked with Konami still looking to fund two SH games that they could get in contact and develop a game. Toyama would be able to make a horror game like he wanted, it’d be behind an IP many would like to see Toyama work on and has more market share than Siren or another new IP does, Konami just want a quality Silent Hill game to help their reputation get back on track and been shipping around for the “right pitch”. The deal was negotiated in early 2019, Sony Japan Studio is developing it composed of the Siren/Gravity Rush team, but they also contacted a lot of people who worked on Silent Hill previously to help with it, which is why people like Akira (Yamaoka, the composer) and Masahiro Ito (the monster designer) are on board as well.

In terms of cost, Sony and Konami are both fitting the bill of development, Sony is making it, Konami gets a share of each copy sold and just partially have to fund development. From Konami’s side having a Sony first-party studio develop the game, with them only partially funding development and though they receive a smaller percentage cut from sales, they also don’t have to pay for marketing or anything so they’re cool with it and the quality may help their image. Sony for them I don’t think they expect to set the world on fire, but the actual budget is nothing compared to some other games they fund, the budget is even made smaller due to Konami helping out, and this title has more of a chance as a horror game to succeed with the brand recognition and the demand for a good SH game from horror fans than a new Siren or IP maybe would based on past performance. It also helps many at Sony do like Toyama and his team and want to give them a chance to be able to stand out more and gain more recognizability.

I do hear the plan is the game will be revealed this year, (and at this point, it’s nearing being in development for about a year and a half almost), but it’s hard to speak concretely about these things. I also will add with the Silent Hill stuff, I received some word on some other things I’m not sharing which over the next year will confirm or deny to me if what I was shared was true or not ahead of time. Some will feel that’s an excuse I have “things that can prove it I can’t share”, but all I can do for now is be open and honest about it.”

Konami’s reputation has been down in the past five years since Hideo Kojima has left them. They want to turn things around somewhat with this soft reboot. We have another post: „To the talk about a remake or new entry and such, I’ve heard from pretty much every person who may know the title that this is a soft reboot, which as many say a lot of the series is anyways but they’re going a bit further with it this time. At the moment in development they’re thinking of just calling the game, “Silent Hill”, it won’t have any numbers or anything and be made so it can easily be a person’s first entry in the series. It’s not a remake and it doesn’t erase past games but none of that is important really to this game. From my understanding, it’s not a remake of the first game and it’s not a complete reboot, more of a re-introduction.”

Since this game is being developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Studio, we can expect the game to be a PlayStation 5-exclusive unless Konami – as the holder of the IP – makes a PC port somehow, but it’s unlikely. It’s a lot to digest, though!

Source: WCCFTech

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