Didn't Konami make back their money in the first couple of days MGS5 was out?
So reportedly from an article in Nikkei the budget was $80 million+. That means profit as percentage of money spent isn't gonna be all that great. Compared to a mobile game that they spent less than a million on and made back multiple times the money.
There's an element of risk in a large project that needs to be weighed with the possible gain.
And a project needs to aim to deliver greater value than just leaving the money in the bank.
Here's Konami's Fiscal year end presentation April 2015 to March 2016:
https://www.konami.com/ir/en/ir-data/meeting/2016/en0510_7y9x35.pdf
And here's it for 6 months from April 2015 ending September 2015:
https://www.konami.com/ir/en/ir-data/meeting/2015/1030_355711.pdf
It's funny how MGS is the second bullet point there.
Mobile game “JIKKYOU PAWAFURU PUROYAKYU” surpasses 22 million downloads and takes the No.1
position on the App Store gross ranking in March for the first time.
Probably cost them nothing to make in comparison to MGS.
No budgetary reason justifies that treatment and sabotaging of the game, they impacted it's potential sales by shipping an incomplete game, they also slapped gamers in the face by thinking this type of practice is acceptable.
Slapped them in the face? The game reviewed incredibly well despite it.
How much better would it have done otherwise with a few more million spent on it?
'Gamers' just need to accept that this:
Is more valuable than AAA games.
Activision bought King for $5.9 Billion. That's $5900 million. Keep that in mind.
That pachinko machine is wireless without the brand power of mgs. And lol if you think it requires 1 programmer and designer. Nothing is ever that easy.
I'm exaggerating. But compared to the team size for MGS there's an order of magnitude difference.
