Konami Announces It Will Be Focusing On the Mobile Market

Its seems like Konami's series of bizarre business decisions have come to a head. Konami President Hideki Hayakawa has announced that the company's gaming division will be switching its focus to mobile phones.

Though we in the West have only seen Konami from a game developer/producer viewpoint, the company actually makes less than half of its yearly revenue off of its digital entertainment interests. Konami's real bread and butter is its casino and Pachinko operations as well as its chain of health clubs. For Konami, who is facing less and less profitable console sales figures, it's not a big deal to drastically cut down on producing those games.

Their mobile efforts have panned out well for them, and Hayakawa says, "Following the pay-as-you-play model of games like Power Pro and Winning Eleven with additional content, our games must move from selling "items" to selling things "features." We saw that even people who buy physical games are motivated to buy extra content [DLC]. The success of Power Pro especially has motivated us to actively push more of our popular series onto mobile than ever before."

Although it's sad to see the publisher of Metal Gear Solid, Contra, Castlevania, and other decades beloved series possible slipping out of the console game industry, we can only hope that "mobile" includes the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita as well.