Thought this story was interesting. Obviously Konami letting go of Hideo Kojima has been extremely controversial, but some sources have now shed some light at the reasons behind the split between the two.

Original source is Rika Muranaka, a composer for MGS 1-3.

Daley: "The main reason for the falling out, at least in her opinion, is that Kojima gets paid a salary, and doesn't make any profit share on the game. He gets paid a certain amount no matter what, and he was spending so much money and delaying the project, and adding all these features and making sure the game was the biggest and best thing it could be, and Konami was unhappy with that because [delaying] has no effect on him. He was spending the budget on this and that and upgrading the Fox Engine and then delaying further because the engine wasn't ready, and Konami wasn't happy with that because he gets his salary and he takes a more traditional "Japanese man" approach by not taking a profit share. So in doing that, he gets a little more than a game creator would but doesn't take bonuses from the game selling well."

Yong: "So you're telling me that Kojima wanting to make the game the best it can be is what started the conflict?"

Daley: Yes. In her eyes, Kojima's a fantastic creator, and probably the best creator of his time, but he doesn't have a strong business sense like Konami would like him to have. Where instead of, for example, cutting corners by lowering foliage resolution, he wants to make sure everything looks as good and polished as possible. She said they paid for her to write 30-40 songs that ended up not being used, and he'd tell her to write another one, then another one, then another one, because he settles for what he likes and has a good mind for what people want to see and what people want to hear. (Amen on that, yo: Avirdi's personal addition).

Daley: "She's worked directly with Kojima for the music before so she does have some insight, and personally believes that the music has suffered in MGSV because she's not a part of it, because they couldn't afford her. So instead of paying her to go to all these people and recruit them for the music, they chose to remove her from the equation and go to the people directly."

Source (In French)

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It's been pretty clear that Kojima's involvment meant a hefty cost. Guess that cost wasn't worth keeping the quality involved.

Seems like conflicting with him wasn't that great of a business decision either.

Looking at it from that lens, Kojima was being a dick .. Sort of.

I dont think konami are the bad guys in this whole situation, it just makes them seem as they are because of how much we love kojima. Konami aren't slagging Kojima, they just want to respect his privacy by not talking about him or the situation, whatever it is.

Too bad Kojima doesn't work for Nintendo.

I mean look at Aunoma.

MGS4 was shit. Ground zeroes is shit. There is a possibility Phantom pain will be shite too. So who knows.

~Mod Edit~

This post has also been moderated.

-Smeags

There's definiely some merit to what's being said.

Castlevania goes from a handheld pixel-art series to a full fledged AAA hack 'n slash with Patrick Stewart as a voice actor under Kojima.

Silent Hill gets the cutting edge treatment and stars Norman Reedus under Kojima.

For Kojima, perfection was key, cost be damned. Konami didn't see it that way.

And how much money has him and his team made for Konami over the years? They had to get rid of him because they want to focus on cheap shit mobile games. Regardless of what went down Konami are still being petty assholes imo with they way they are trying to purge him and his teams name from everything. Apparently the CEO hates him.

No its not sad. 

Creator Interest -------------------------------------- Business interest

 The bar going too far in either direction is bad. Balance is needed. 

Platinum is a perfect example of a developer that is too far on the creator interest. They tend to create games only a few 100k want to play. Its why CAPCOM fired them.

If Kojima was going so far that bar for profit was getting too high then thats a problem. No game should need 10mill sales to start profiting. Doing it while knowing it wont effect him is dickish even if it is for a good thing.