Konami's had a banner year, with big releases from both Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill. With the former, we got the long-awaited remake of the third game in Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, and a brand new installment in Silent Hill f for the latter.
Both have done well critically and, as a new financial report states, commercially. In a round-up for March through September of this year, the publisher notes that both games crossed the threshold of one million "initial sales" globally. In other words, they launched incredibly strongly.
Silent Hill f actually became a standard-bearer for the embattled horror series to sell one million copies, narrowly outdoing the Silent Hill 2 Remake's time of four days. This is the first wholly new entry in over a decade, signifying genuine investment and interest from Konami in after years of Pyramid Head and that mysterious and terrifying town languishing in limbo.
There’s a small note on f's conception, stating the idea was to make something "beautiful yet horrifying." The use of 1960s Japan and more plant-based monsters, the game lives up to that description. Even though it's a spin-off canonically, taking place decades before the mainline games and well removed from them geographically, it just goes to show what all that pent-up desire does for a franchise.
Solid Snake's return, then, actually enjoyed one million purchases around the world in just 24 hours. A beloved game, from an S-tier property, remade for modern hardware, is truly an equation for success. The only note given here is, "allows players to enjoy extreme survival stealth action in a jungle setting," and, yep, that is correct.
Coincidentally, Silent Hill f and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater both take place in the ‘60s. Does this matter? Probably not. But Konami, if you're wondering what to do with Zone of the Enders, maybe consider going retro-futuristic with it.
