Konami and mobile games publisher Glu have announced a deal today which will see the latter distributing mobile titles for the former throughout Europe, Australasia and the Middle East. It's also been revealed that Konami has set up a dedicated mobile development studio in France, specifically to service these markets with their own versions of top-selling Konami brands.
Konami has made little impact in the mobile games scene outside of Japan, even though the company has released dozens of mobile titles for its domestic market. The problem is technology: Japanese handsets are about three years more advanced than ours, allowing for lots of community, multiplayer and micro-transaction elements that we can only dream of. This makes the titles difficult to port, and they'd be severely delayed. Capcom's Resident Evil: The Missions 3D for example, is only just being rolled out to UK operators, but it was released in Japan two years ago. Not great if you're looking to create a unified release schedule with big console titles.
So which Konami legends are coming across to UK mobiles?
No specific titles have been named, but several are in development and the first are due within a matter of months. Reading between the lines at a press briefing yesterday, I felt that Pro Evo, Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill are likely - as is a version of Castlevania. The Konami exec I talked to spoke at some length about plans for the latter, mentioning the series' suitability for the platform.
I'm not that excited about PES - footie games just don't work that well on mobile, but a 2D Castlevania title? Or a Metal Gear Ac!d conversion? They'll do for starters...
