Kojima Productions ‘going at a very good pace’

Still haven’t settled on a graphics engine for new project

After missing The Game Awards last year, prompting host Geoff Keighley to point the finger at Metal Gear Solid publisher Konami, game developer Hideo Kojima sat down with Keighley at E3 this year, his first trip to the show in two years. While the interview was light on news, Kojima did take the opportunity to update everyone on the current status of building out his new studio, Kojima Productions.

"Towards the end of last year we founded Kojima Productions," Kojima said. "And from there I’m trying to put people together, looking for technology, looking for facilities, looking for everything, and trying to live up to the expectations that people have of me and try to deliver as soon as possible something for the people.

"I was fortunate enough that I had many offers from many different people; however, with Sony I’ve had a long relationship and there has been some trust within our relationship so with this, our first title, I wanted to base it on that relationship of trust that we have, so that's why we're working with Sony."

As Kojima’s Twitter followers know, the game developer recently took a worldwide tour of game studios with Sony's Mark Cerny, visiting studios like Naughty Dog, Quantic Dream, Crytek, DICE, Mojang, Guerrilla and others. The motivation for the tour: "searching for the newest technology."

Bound for 10-day trip searching for the newest technology with Mark-san (@cerny ). It will be a world tour! http://pic.twitter.com/B1XItIS8z4

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) January 19, 2016

When asked about the reasons for the tour, Kojima said there were two reasons. "One is technology, tools and services and what kind of technologies we can find. So that was one of the objectives going through all the studios and seeing what kind of stuff they have."

The other reason was about the kind of work environment these studios have created. Kojima was curious about "what kind of refrigerators they have, what kind of things allow the people to work at their best," he said. "These are the things I was looking for, going to different studios. How do they optimize and how do people feel most comfortable?"

While that tour was in January, the team at Kojima Productions hasn't made any final decisions just yet. "We haven’t decided on an engine yet, though we have been able to narrow our options on some specific engines," he said. "We’re doing tests on gameplay and on another engine we’re doing tests on the kind of visual quality that we're looking for. And for another engine, different kinds of test."

Which is all to say that it might be awhile before we have an actual game reveal.

"We're going at a good pace, definitely moving forward," Kojima said. "We're doing everything in parallel, planning and getting people together, having the company moving forward. So we just started, but it's going at a very good pace."

Read the full article here by Polygon