Last year there were intense rumors that Sony was extremely interested in buying Metal Gear and Silent Hill licenses from Konami. Shortly before this rumor was yet another rumor that Konami was interested in licensing out their IPs, with one somewhat confirmed deal involving Silent Hill being licensed out to 2 different studios, one of them being Bloober Team. This was led to be believed that PS5 was going to see a true sequel, while another shorter spin-off type game was also to be made.
One of the studios that was mentioned in the rumor was Bloober. Now we have an official announcement from Bloober that they are indeed working with Konami on a “major horror franchise” (wonder what that could be). While not confirmed to be Silent Hill, several inside sources are reporting it is just that.
If true, this seemingly confirms the original rumor that Konami is licensing out their properties considering the original rumor specifically listed Bloober as part of the deal.
Now the question is, who is the other studio? Sony is rumored to be hosting their own event early in July which could provide further answers if they were the ones to grab other Konami licenses. One big rumor that was also attached to this was that Sony paid for a Metal Gear license as well, which they handed off to Bluepoint for a remaster. Recent leaks suggest Sony purchased Bluepoint, and the studio has been developing a second game alongside their recent release which has yet to be named.
Silent Hill rumors are further ignited because the original rumor of Sony working to get the license included them sending the project to their Japan Studio where original series creators were tied to the game including Keiichiro Toyama (director and writer of the original Silent Hill), Masahiro Ito (creature designer for the first four games), and Akira Yamaoka (composer). Recently both Ito and Yamaoka have been mentioning they are hard at work on a new unannounced project, both dating back to when the original rumor of Sony getting the license began.
Which could suggest that both games could be revealed during the Sony event next month, potentially next week, since both titles seem to have been in production for some time now.
Konami has also been fanning the flames a bit with a couple hype trains for Silent Hill and Metal Gear, only to disappointingly announce new merchandise in their store. It does seem rather odd to be doing this as people are excited though.
For those hoping Kojima would be on board for either project may be disappointed to hear this tends to lead us to believe that rumor has gone elsewhere. If Sony is picking up Silent Hill with this much hype, it only makes sense for Microsoft to play the game with Xbox too. Kojima’s next title is rumored to be an episode based horror game and Microsoft is front runners to gobble up rights after the studio was turned down by Sony. This could be why neither Sony or Kojima are commenting on rumors since they do have something planned, just not entirely related to the indie game Abandoned. But at this point anything is possible.
