“Death Stranding” Kojima’s long anticipated independent project is on its way, generating higher hype on itself with each passing day. With the gamers’ anticipation, Kojima Production also grows, last month, Hideo Kojima invited a former Konami president to his team now it grows even larger.
Game Rant reports that Akio Sakamoto, the man who worked on the FOX engine will come to the Kojima Productions team. Including Kojima, this makes for ten ex-Konami employees to have become part of Kojima’s new studio. Surrounding himself with familiar faces is not an unexpected move from Hideo Kojima. “Death Stranding” has high hopes and high goals to reach, to be able to pull it off, they will have to be at the pinnacle of their action and gathering the minds he knows is a smart move to achieve it.
Gaming Bolt shares further details on the former Konami employees who have joined the ranks of Kojima Productions. Among them are the art director Yoji Shinkawa, Ken-Ishiro Imaizumi who was a former producer at Konami. Other notable names among the newly recruited talents of Kojima Productions are Masaki Saito and Jackie Tan who both took positions of game developers back when they were working at Konami. One of Kojima’s greatest achievement is succeeding to recruit the cinematic artist Yasuhiro Kawakami who has delivered some of the best animations released with products of Konami.
Kojima Productions’ mascot Ludens is getting a statue molded in his image. Gamespot reports that the statue will be 63 inches tall, equipped with an extra-vehicular activity suit and holding a flag with Kojima Productions’ logo on it. Only 150 statues will be crafted and all of them will be personally signed by Hideo Kojima himself. The statues will not be available for purchase before 2018. This should not sadden you, as each costs $2000 and there is one-per-person limitation on sells.