It’s not wrong to say that Konami has turned to mobile and pachinko games. However, the company wants to enter into the publishing space with its new branch that will help publish third-party or new games ranging from indie, double-A, and triple-A.
Website mcvuk.com was able to catch up with Konami’s Richard Jones — senior brand and business development manager — and ask him about the newly opened publishing branch. Jones’ response regarding the company’s current plan lies below:
“We are looking for exciting and innovative titles of varying scale. And we’re really excited by this new programme. We can’t wait to show everyone where we’re going with it.”
Jones continues:
“The primary objective of this programme is to bulk out our portfolio. And it is to bulk it out with exciting and diverse games, and specifically games that are targeting the western market as well.
The idea is to diversify the portfolio. So we’re looking to work with external studios of all sizes, up to double-A and beyond at some point.”
In other words, Konami’s publishing branch wants to focus on expanding the portfolio of games and developers associated with said branch. Nevertheless, this includes working with “exciting and diverse games” and targeting “the western market.”
Furthermore, Jones notes that the publishing branch of Konami will help with any operation that may be going on in Japan. In other words, if a Konami game is released in Japan, this new publishing branch will be able to help with distribution outside of Japan:
“We are looking to complement what is going on in Japan. So the dev teams in Japan are continuing to work on the Konami IP. And we will continue to publish those titles. And so the idea of what this programme offers is the chance for us at Konami Europe, and my colleagues in the US as well, is to find complementary titles.”
Jones also makes mention of Konami finding success by relying on the Japanese and Asian market:
“The other area where Konami can excel is that route into the Japanese market. So while I’m working for Konami Europe and I’m looking for products for the European market. I think one of the interesting areas that might be of interest to certain studios is our routes back into the Japan and Asian market.”
Aside from that plan, Konami also wants to offer “great services to studios of all sizes.” An excerpt of Jones explaining how Konami plans on offering “great services” to those that want to team up with the company lies below:
“We all know there’s a number of publishers out there offering great services to studios of all sizes. But we believe that we have a strong offering that we can bring people that would be the perfect fit for certain developers.
Jones later notes that Konami’s publishing branch can provide developers the traditional support like any other publisher. This means the company is in a position to offer “expertise” on international teams to handle tasks like marketing, PR, sales, distribution, as well as development services, like QA, localization, age ratings, and third-party relationships:
“Developers are not necessarily set up with in-house capacity for publishing roles. So we’re in a position to offer the support that they need, to those studios that might be interested in the publisher route, we bring our expertise and international teams to handle tasks that they probably don’t want, or they don’t, have the capacity to do so: marketing, PR, sales, distribution, as well as development services, like QA, localization, age ratings, and third-party relationships. So traditionally what the publisher brings.
And by saying that we want the developer to be front and centre, we want to allow them to do what they love doing, do what they’re best at doing, which is make games, and then we can kind of fit in and do the going to market part.”
Lastly, Konami also claims in the interview that it’s “coming back to the console and PC market” thanks to the new third-party publishing branch.
