14 DAY TRIAL // Hideo Kojima, the leader of the development team currently working on the Metal Gear Solid franchise, says that he is interested in finding a new developer who can handle the producer duties on the series in order to allow him to explore new ideas for other titles.
VG247 quotes the legendary game creator as saying that, “To be honest, I’ve actually wanted to do something similar just to change it. I don’t know if the Metal Gear brand sometimes is a bit heavy to carry. The franchise is difficult to handle. But so far I’ve had no success. Metal Gear Rising, fortunately that was a spin-off so that went well.”
The company has not yet announced whether Rising will remain its own franchise or whether ideas from it will be integrated into the Solid continuity.
Kojima adds, “Ideally I would like to step out from the Metal Gear franchise as a producer and dedicate myself to other games. So far that has proven to be a bit difficult. Alien is a very successful example. Unfortunately in our case it’s more like Terminator, that once Cameron steps out of it there was kind of a mess.”
The developer says that he is inspired by the current crop of indie titles, which have the freedom to explore weird ideas with limited resources and can appeal to a smaller number of fans.
At the same time, Hideo Kojima has ambitions outside of gaming and would like to explore movie making or novel writing in the coming years, presumably both linked to the Metal Gear Solid universe.
The game creator says that he spent the last 25 years working on the video game franchise and that he is starting to explore the concept of legacy and is worried about the way he will be judged by fans after he is dead.
Kojima also says that he is interested in creating a future Metal Gear Solid title that follows the same core concepts as the Grand Theft Auto series from Rockstar.
At the moment, his studio is working on Ground Zeroes, which is set to be launched on the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4 and current-gen consoles in early March.
The title will serve as a prequel to The Phantom Pain, which is expected to be delivered before the end of the year.
Both titles will be powered by the Fox Engine tech, designed to bring increased graphics quality and better open world mechanics.