Silent Hill Nintendo DS Pitch Got "Disheartening" Reception from Konami

Later this month, Dementium: The Ward will release on Nintendo Switch. The horror game originally released on Nintendo DS back in 2007, and was developed by Renegade Kid, a studio co-founded by Jools Watsham. Prior to the game's release, Renegade Kid was looking for a publisher for the game, and met with several companies, including Konami. The developer pitched the game as a potential new entry in the Silent Hill series, but that clearly did not pan out. In a new interview with Nintendo Life, Watsham (who now owns the developer Atooi) offered details about that pitch, revealing Konami's "disheartening" reaction.

"I attended GDC in March 2007 and scheduled a bunch of meetings with different publishers in San Francisco. Konami was one of the publishers I met with. It was a fairly brief meeting in a hotel lobby near the convention center. The person I met with from Konami was rather dismissive and said something to the effect of, 'We wouldn't give the Silent Hill IP to a team like yours.' It was quite surprising and very disheartening," Watsham told Nintendo Life.

"I imagine the game could have been quite different with the Silent Hill IP influencing it, but that would have depended on the budget given to development. Fortunately, soon after GDC we met up with Gamecock in Austin, Texas, and signed the game with them."

Entrusting the Silent Hill IP

Those previous comments from Konami are very interesting given the current direction of the Silent Hill franchise! While the idea of entrusting Silent Hill to a smaller team might have been unthinkable for Konami in 2007, the publisher has two small studios working on Silent Hill games at the moment: Bloober Team and NeoBards Entertainment. Bloober Team is currently working on a Silent Hill 2 remake, having previously focused on mostly smaller scale horror games, such as Layers of Fear and Observer. Meanwhile, Silent Hill f developer NeoBards Entertainment is an independent studio that has often served in a support role on games like Marvel's Avengers.

Given this newfound openness to working with smaller teams on Silent Hill, it would be interesting to see if Konami would be more open to a pitch from Renegade Kid these days. Regardless, Watsham seems to be happy with how things shook out, telling Nintendo Life that "being able to continue to develop our own creations was much more satisfying than creating someone else's brand."

Dementium: The Ward on Nintendo Switch

Atooi will release Dementium: The Ward October 12th on Nintendo Switch. The release will be the third one for the game, as it was made available on 3DS in 2015. However, that version is no longer available for sale thanks to the 3DS eShop's closure earlier this year.

Are you surprised that Konami wasn't more receptive to the Nintendo DS pitch? Do you think things worked out for the better as a result? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!