You don’t have to look very hard to find stories about publishers struggling to make ends meet in 2026. Skyrocketing budgets caused by a demand for franchise games to grow bigger and better with every installment have put major players like Sony and Microsoft in a tough spot. But in a sea of business horror stories, one small triumph is starting to emerge in the most unlikely of places: Konami.
After a decade of behind-the-scenes drama that turned a once-powerful publisher into a Pachinko punchline, Konami has begun to rediscover its footing in a real way. A successful Silent Hill 2 remake, quickly followed by the critically acclaimed Silent Hill f, revived an all-but-dead franchise in one year flat, to the tune of millions of units shipped. That strategy has only expanded in 2026, as the double whammy of Silent Hill: Townfall and Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse have proved that Konami has finally cracked the code to restoring the relevancy of its once-great franchises.
While it’s hard to make the same trick work across the board in the video game industry, other publishers may want to take note. Konami is currently laying out a potential vision for an industry that can find success by scaling back instead of going as big as possible. It’s surprising that this is coming from Konami, considering that the publisher was on the brink of irrelevancy just a decade ago.
The publisher’s now infamous fallout with Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima crushed good will from players and stalled any momentum it might have had coming out of its award-winning Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. While Konami didn’t stop making games altogether, its output from 2016 to 2024 wasn’t exactly impressive. Major franchises like Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania, and Silent Hill seemed to go dead as sports games and retro rereleases filled in the gaps.
Konami began to show some signs of life in 2023, when the publisher released Super Bomberman R 2 and Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1, but the real sea change came in 2024. Seemingly out of nowhere, Konami revealed its intention to revive Silent Hill, starting with a quick experimental game called Silent Hill: The Short Message. Though it was a critical dud, it doubled as a proof of concept, and Konami made good on its plans later that year with a successful remake of Silent Hill 2.
That project wasn’t handled by an internal team at Konami, but by Bloober Team, an indie horror studio that had made a name for itself over the past few years. Two years later, it’s becoming clear that Silent Hill 2 was the start of an even grander strategy. 2025 gave us Silent Hill f, a follow-up helmed by NeoBards Entertainment, a developer who had a history of working with Capcom on games like Resident Evil: Resistance. With Konami’s support and free creative reign over a big IP, NeoBards delivered a radical reimagining of Silent Hill that resonated with fans.
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