Five years have passed since Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain released, and given how popular the franchise remains, there’s much speculation over if and when a sixth game may be released. Unfortunately, there’s been no official word from developer and publisher Konami on if or when a Metal Gear Solid 6 could arrive. But given the events surrounding the development and release of 2015’s Phantom Pain, there’s reason to believe that the franchise may be done, at least in video game form.
Publisher Konami butted heads with the lead developer and creator of the franchise, Hideo Kojima, during the development of the title. Konami was largely focusing their efforts towards mobile gaming, which tend to be cheaper to develop and can have a larger profit thanks to the ease with which microtransactions can be incorporated. As such, the publisher disagreed with how much money and effort Kojima was putting into The Phantom Pain.
Shortly after the game was released, Konami took drastic efforts to distance themselves from Kojima, even taking his name off the Metal Gear Solid 5's website. It remains unclear exactly what caused such a dramatic break-up between the publisher and developer, but Kojima has since gone on to open his own Kojima Productions studio, and Konami, similarly, has tried to carry on the franchise without him. However, the difficulties the developer has encountered in keeping the Metal Gear Solid franchise alive and well following Kojima’s departure seems to imply the franchise is over.
How Konami & Kojima’s Break-Up Impacts Metal Gear’s Future
Despite the fallout, Konami attempted to continue the Metal Gear franchise without Kojima. This is understandable from a business perspective. Konami still owned the rights to the series, even though Kojima created it, and it’s a multi-million dollar franchise, so the developer was definitely looking to capitalize on its success. So, in 2018, Konami released Metal Gear Survive. However, considering how involved Kojima was with Metal Gear Solid and the fact that his personal touches were sprinkled throughout all of the Metal Gear games, what came after his departure felt disconnected from the rest of the Metal Gear franchise.
This explains why Metal Gear Survive has largely been branded as a flop. Though it builds on the foundation of some of Metal Gear Solid V's systems, it introduced generic zombies into the fold, a move that even Kojima admits felt out of place. "It's totally unrelated to me," Kojima said in 2016 about Metal Gear Survive, SVG reports. "Metal [Gear] is espionage with political fiction. So, because of that, there's no reason that zombies would show up."
If Konami’s main interest in carrying on with the Metal Gear Solid franchise following Kojima’s departure was money, they’re likely not going to develop a Metal Gear Solid 6 considering how poorly received Metal Gear Survive was, and it's likely they'll stick to other forms of media for a while with the IP. As such, while nothing official has confirmed that a new Metal Gear Solid game is completely off the cards, the future of a Metal Gear Solid 6 any time soon looks bleak, even though a movie may finally release.
Source: SVG