Konami Wants to Annualise Silent Hill, Has 'Many' Unannounced Games

Capcom do it well with resident evil balancing new instalments between remakes dont see why Konami cant do it with silent hill games

The more Silent Hill games that come out the better I say, I think people don't realise just how dormant the franchise has been. I can see Townfall doing ok but not on the same level as 2R or f and if done right SH1R will pop off.

An anual release can very easily turn into an anal release.

Wow, a new Silent Hill each year would be a treat to the senses.

If of course they do a Call of Duty and separate all internal studios correctly to keep the cadence that could be brilliant!

However, the complaints that land for Call of Duty will no doubt still apply to this. Where give it a few years and people will be calling for originality and for it to “go back to its roots”.

I wish them the best, and I’ll no doubt buy them and support them, but a yearly cadence is usually very difficult to maintain for any development studio.

Do I mind them trying and therefore providing me with more Silent Hill? Absolutely not! Haha.

I have no problem with anual releases as long as the quality doesn't drop because of it. This was a thing back in the PS1 days, but a lot less feesible now. You saw companies try and anualise everything back in the early 10s, but they quickly realised it was not going to work.

@ButteredCrumpet I'd argue that Silent Hill as a franchise is a lot more open to experimentation than Call of Duty is. Silent Hill is a supernatural horror game that takes place in a town. There is room to do some interesting things there.

COD is one of the most rigid franchises to try and innovate with. At its core, its a realistic (or tries to be) FPS game that deals with genuine conflict, past, present and future. You can't innovate a whole lot without breaking the immersion (which certain COD games have been criticised for).

Movement being realistic means there's only so much you can do with traversal and level design. You can't design unique enemies, because they all need to be approached with the idea that they can kill you in two seconds. And you can't go through time too much, because there's only so many eras in history that had a wide variety of guns.

Annual titles will re-kill the franchise. Bad idea, Konami.

And get ready to be crapped on like FIFA and CoD. GTA hasn't even released in 13 years and some are already talking crap about how they're tired of hearing it.

Oh nooo, bad idea! I dont think turning anything into an annual series is a good thing, have we not learned anything from Assassins Creed, Call of Duty etc

It all starts off with good intentions but usually very quickly the quality starts to drop and people become bored especially when there isn't anything new to distinguish each game. Its much better to look forward to these big games every 2 or 3 years, gives people time to play enjoy and look forward to the new installments and the devs to come up with a solid story and gameplay.

They're already doing annual release.

• 2023: SH Ascension
• 2024: SH Short Message & SH 2 remake
• 2025: SH f
• 2026: SH Townfall

With remake and sequel, i'm sure they can keep annual release for another 8 years or maybe more.

• SH 1 remake
• SH 3 remake
• SH 4 remake
• SH Homecoming remake
• SH Downpour remake
• SH Origins remake
• SH Book of Memories remake
• SH Shattered Memories remake
• SH f sequel

Silent Hill is better than ever with SH2 & f. I hope they maintain that quality.

@ShadowRJ Completely agreed, but it’ll be interesting to see if the developers can keep up a yearly release schedule, still innovate and still not get absolutely blown away by the competition that releases every few years instead.

Silent Hill has an awful lot of potential, but then if you look at films like Paranormal Acitivty, Insidious, Conjuring, Purge, Evil Dead, Halloween, Scream, Childs Play even Poltergeist etc.

One thing they all have in common is the more they try to explore the lore and general world they’ve built the more it fractures the fans and causes rifts in the fanbase.

So I hope Silent Hill proves me wrong, I really do, as it’s one of my most loved concepts from a video game franchise, along with Resident Evil.

But where you and I see the potential in the world building and stories and what you can do with it. If it’s still just a woman/man/child walking slowly through a town with fog and a scary atmosphere, after 5 more releases and 5 more years that may get a bit stale.

Having potential doesn’t equate to it being utilised. Every time Call of Duty tries to implement something new it’s divisive, so I wouldn’t want to be the developers behind Silent Hill in 10 years from now.

Because if all they have is a town that’s dimly lit, creepy and a random Asian girl pops up or a bloke with a pyramid head every so often, that’s going to get crapped on quick.

There’s always the danger of too much of a good thing. The reason people crap on yearly releases is if enough hasn’t changed for them to feel it seems worthy of money.

£70 a year for Silent Hill yearly and no physical releases seems like a fine line to walk along.

I so desperately want them to pull it off though.

It seems like this is Japans idea for dealing with high dev costs.
Sega wants Persona, Sonic and Yakuza to be annual franchises

Square wants a new Final Fantasy every year

Capcom already does it with RE.

@PuppetMaster I refuse to even acknowledge Ascension, like have you actually watched it? I have and it was insulting...

Edit: Also Shattered memories is already a reimaging of SH1 so why bother with that? And there is no way they will never touch Downpour or Homecoming ever again.

@ButteredCrumpet It definitely won't be easy, and the developers will need to come up with some great ideas, however seeing how Capcom is able to constantly reinvent RE time and time again, I am willing to give Silent Hill a chance.

I think the reason why changes to COD get more backlash is because it's supposed to be a realistic shooter. My first COD game (and most others) was COD 4, which was a very realistic military shooter dealing with serious, realistic subject matter.

You can't really get creative in COD in a way that makes sense on a thematical level, because at its core, COD is not supposed to be creative. It's meant to be grounded and realistic.

That's why everytime a COD game tries to be more creative, it gets pushback. COD is a realistic grounded world where creative things don't really exist. COD set in space, pushback. Fun skins to use in multiplayer, pushback. Platforming challenges that are presented in the form of hallucinations, pushback.

Good way to set franchise fatigue.

You can always count on Konami to screw things up. There was a moment they were one of the giants of gaming, but they decided to focus their efforts on Gacha machines.

@Pat_trick Konami were in decline long before their gacha crisis. Ever since the HD era began, Konami seriously struggled to compete, even by the standards of Japanese game developers.

@ShadowRJ I think that's a bit too broad.

Konami certainly had issues during the HD era, but they were still a major publisher with successes like MGS4, Peace Walker, Lords of Shadow, PES and eventually MGSV. Their withdrawal from AAA console development came later around 2014–15, rather than at the beginning of the HD era.

@Pat_trick By the HD era, I was mainly referring to the PS3/Xbox 360 era. Compare Konami on PS3 to Konami on PS2. I admit that Konami were still publishing good things on handhelds, but on console, it was MGS3, PES and Lords of Shadows. That was it. Everything else the published on HD consoles sucked.

I'm glad that Silent Hill is making a resurgence but we don't need annual releases. It will only make the franchise stale and can result to low quality games.

I want Konami to make a Pro Evoloution collection.

i'm excited for the remake of part 1 , hopefully this news means silent hill 3 remake is a given , would love to see a remake of origins though, they could expand it ect.

Looking forward to SH1 Remake, loved SH2 Remake so much

This is such a terrible idea. Burn out will come quick and sales numbers will drop. Silent Hill has always been somewhat of a niche franchise and churning out yearly releases won't change that. This is FF and Yakuza all over again. Sigh.

Awful idea. Way to burn through ideas.

Konami needs to focus on Rumble Roses. It’s their biggest IP and best selling franchise of all time. 😤

People saying, “Resident Evil does it…” are maybe not thinking that Resident Evil is BONKERS at times. Enemies are utter bullet sponges, dialogue is campy and cheesy, action sequences and explosions. It allows for much more freedom. These yearly resident evils, for how good they are, always go off the rails toward the end. Silent Hill does not do that historically.
Let’s not forget, it’s like comparing 2 different horror movie styles: Jacob’s Ladder and Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan; Insidious and Jason X; etc.
I don’t think it’s going to work long term for silent hill. The quality is just not going to be there each and every time and it’s going to die out again.
I really just can’t wait for the SH1 remake. I’m so hoping they wrap in Silent Hill 3 somehow since that was a direct sequel.

Sigh...I wish they wouldn't. I hate it when companies try to annualize a franchise. Even Capcom is trying to do it with Resident Evil now, and I love that series. We don't need a new release every single year. That just leads to franchise fatigue. I hated it even back in the day when Capcom did that with Mega Man on the NES.

@Oram77 Silent Hill f was bad and a downgrade from Silent Hill 2 Remake both graphically and gameplay wise. That's the other issue with annual releases by completely different studios.

Konami should just have Bloober Team take control of the franchise and make the games. I'll take games of good quality and a few years apart rather than annual releases which could be of any quality from good to bad.

They have to slot a new mainline entry in there at some point, a good ol' Silent Hill 5 to anchor the strategy. Can't all be spin-offs or remakes every year.

So long as they take the Team Silent approach and not the homecoming, downpour, etc route. Still to play F. But when we finally see the SH1 remake I am going to poop my pants. One of my favourite games, first purchase on PSN.

If they continue to switch developers and continue to have new takes I don't see a problem with annual releases. However, I don't think I have it in me to play a new SH game every year

How to kill a franchise, step 1: Make it a yearly release

@kyleforrester87 what's wrong with Silent Hill stories that take place outside of America? I thought Silent Hill f was pretty cool

Horrible idea.

@CRASH64 so you've only played the new ones. Got it.

@Oram77 A reimagineing isn't the same as a remake, and Shattered Memories no where near as good as SH1.

It's working for Capcom with Resident Evil, if they've planned accordingly this could be great for Silent Hill. My fingers and my fingers' fingers are crossed for them.

If they want to destroy the series, go right ahead

If you treat silent hill as a type of horror rather than a place it needs to connect to narratively I think it's fine. Silent hill f really blew me away and a great example of branching out, while some fanboys were complaining that it doesn't connect to the town. I think that approach would be too restrictive and would burn out players eventually. Konami is on fire at the moment.

That feels a little forced like meeting contractual obligations. I’ve heard some bad albums in my time man

@Digital_ghost23 Negative. I have the old ones. The new ones are way better. You're just stuck in the past with stagnated taste⏳️

@PuppetMaster SH Book of Memories remake

Silent Hill: The Madden of horror

@Oram77 You should complaint at Konami representative or Silent Hill producer, not me.

Yes please, loved F especially, need more like that.

Any news about a fix for the broken SH2?

Just make a Silent Hill Master Collection and Ill be happy.

@trev666 We will see soon enough if the quality dwindles or not. I hope they will release the games less broken though and patch it faster then in two years.

Well, that looks like quite a bad idea. I've no doubt we'll enter a new Dark Age of Silent Hill, but then again…
Set a one in Keswick then, cowards!