Konami and The Medium developer Bloober Team have announced a "strategic partnership" which will see them "jointly developing selected contents."
The news was announced in a press release early this morning, Wednesday 30 June, with a statement from Piotr Babieno, Bloober Team CEO, which said: "It is a historic day for me and the culmination of several years of our work. The fact that such a renowned company as Konami has decided to strategically cooperate with the Bloober Team means that we also joined the world leaders in gaming and became an equal partner for the leading players in this market."
To be clear, this isn't an acquisition of Bloober by Konami, but a strategic cooperation agreement, which means that the publisher and developer will work together to "jointly develop selected contents and exchanging know-how".
It's been confirmed by a Konami spokesperson that Bloober will be working with Konami on both existing and new IPs. Although it didn't mention any particular title that the pair are already working on, this announcement is certainly one for Silent Hill fans to pay attention to. After all, Bloober's last game The Medium not only saw players flip between two different versions of the same world, but it also had Silent Hill's Akira Yamaoka provide the game's score.
- As "the success of Silent Hill 2 speaks for itself," Bloober announces its continued partnership with Konami and a "truly special" new joint project
- Palworld developer Pocketpair just launched its own publishing business, and its first project is a horror game from Metroidvania dev and Assassin's Creed actor Abubakar Salim
The spokesperson also confirmed that Konami will "continue to explore partnerships with a variety of development companies as well as continue in-house development of key projects among our own teams, as we have done for many years."
For Bloober, this is the high point of a remarkable few years where the indie developer has moved from the well-regarded scares of Layers of Fear to the blockbuster horror of Blair Witch and the formerly Xbox Series X exclusive The Medium.
Meanwhile, it's hard to state just how pervasive rumors of a new Silent Hill game have been for quite some time now. Last October, we heard about "credible" rumors that Sony was working on a new Silent Hill game with Konami, although this strategic cooperation may signal that this no longer case. Still, who knows, maybe Bloober will be working on a very scary version of Pro Evolution Soccer. That recent PES demo didn't have any jump scares in it, right?
For more about what's coming up this year, here's our guide to the new games 2021.
