While Konami may seem to be scaling back its game development, focusing recently on releasing collections of classic Konami titles, it's expanding in different areas. On Wednesday, Konami announced the formation of a new publishing arm. The new publishing wing of Konami will focus on supporting third-party releases from western studios.
Konami's European brand director Richard Jones recently spoke to GamesIndustry.biz regarding the effort. "The drive is towards publishing more titles from western studios," Jones summarizes. To clarify the Konami's plans, Jones elaborates, "Obviously everyone knows Konami, we have studios and teams in Japan, we have many well-known, well-loved IPs. They're all being managed and looked after by our studios in Japan, and what we're looking for is complementary titles, to build the portfolio with things that perhaps [are] new to Konami -- Western titles for Western audiences."
Konami isn't wasting any time, either. The initiative's first game release has already happened. On Tuesday, Konami launched a game named Skelattack, which was developed by California-based indie studio Ukuza. Ukuza itself is a budding indie publishing house, previously having published the indie platformer Epic Loon, developed by Macrales Studio. The full nature of Ukuza and Konami's relationship isn't clear, but it's said that the two have worked together through the years of Skelattack's development.
Skelattack is a cartoonish platformer with 2D combat, about a skeleton named Skully protecting its Underground dungeon from adventurers hunting for loot. Skelattack has a static, hand-designed world to explore, but mixes in an interesting randomization element. Enemies have some randomized features, for example, one enemy that usually takes two attacks may sometimes take three.
It's unclear how Ukuza formed its relationship with Konami, though the studio did release a demo of Skelattack in 2017 that created some buzz for the project. Konami might have decided to support Skelattack based on that response. It's also unclear how Skelattack fits into the idea of "Western games" outside of being developed by a Western studio.
For now, Konami isn't ready to announce if it's currently publishing any other indie games. It's certainly something that can be looked forward to, however. These types of indie publishing initiatives are becoming increasingly the norm. Square Enix has its Collective, Take-Two has the Private Division, Electronic Arts Originals has been very successful, and so on. Any additional money supporting the indie scene is a positive, both to the studios working so hard and to the industry overall.
Skelattack is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz