“You will probably hear something to be announced this summer,” said Yamaoka through a translator before adding, “And I think that’s what you hope to hear.”
We will not measure the words here. Yamaoka is most famous for his work on the Silent Hill series, where he was an original member of Konami’s Team Silent development team. A new Silent Hill game has run through internet rumors for years, since the cancellation of Hideo Kojima’s PT and is easily the one that fans are most eager to learn more about.
In the years since PT was shelved, rumors of a new Silent Hill game in development have surfaced several times. In 2020, a major leaker reported that two Silent Hill games could be in development, one described as a “soft reboot” and the other an episodic game similar to Telltale titles.
Team Silent’s original art director, Masahiro Ito, also tweeted in 2020 that they were working on a new title “as a central member” and added: “I hope the title will not be canceled”. This last line was interpreted as a reference to the PT, which led many to believe that Ito was causing a new Silent Hill game.
However, Team Silent director and former Sony Japan member Keiichiro Toyama recently left Sony to start his own company Bokeh Game Studio with Gravity Rush designers Junya Okura and Kazunobu Sato.
Toyama’s project is considered a horror action and adventure title, according to an interview with IGN Japan.Meanwhile, Konami has confirmed that it has not closed its game development operation after a corporate scramble, and said that in the past it is always evaluating its entire IP portfolio for future game development.
Things are not yet confirmed at the moment, so if you want to keep your hopes in check, suppose Yamaoka is talking about a new restart of ESPN MLS GameNight.
Matt TM Kim is an IGN reporter. You can contact him @lawoftd on Twitter.