Well I'm of course not going to give a direct answer.
My confusion is, why are we assuming the problem is Konami?
Because it's Konami's license/franchise. Not Vatra's.
When a kid shows up to school unwashed and unfed, do you blame the kid or the parent(s)?
Correct me if I'm wrong, Tomm (which I may very well be), but doesn't Konami, as a major production company, have a responsibility to guide and assist their outsourced developments? Doesn't KCET or KCEA or whatever they are called now have QA teams to go through what Vatra has done and identify/fix glaring technical issues? They are a small, relatively inexperienced team from the Czech Republic, for Christ's sake. It's not like the production was outsourced to Square-Enix or Capcom. Isn't Konami the company that handles marketing and PR for the product? Doesn't Konami decide when a game is acceptable to release to the public?
It's the same damn thing with SH HD Collections- only about 10x worse. I've noticed you've bailed out of that thread, which was a wise choice, because that product is an inexcusable mess.
KONAMI is the company that
appears to be responsible for looking at smaller devs like Climax UK, Double Helix, and Vatra, saying "we're giving you the keys to the car, but we aren't filling it up with gas and the tires are losing air. Get as far as you can with that."
Should I be happy that Konami isn't just abandoning the SH series? Yes and no, Tomm. Yes, because if corporate would have just said "screw it" and been done with it after Homecoming we might not have gotten Shattered Memories (which I honestly loved) and definitely not Downpour (which I think is really great so far, despite its flaws). No, because it's just sad seeing the series
apparently being treated like a 3rd class citizen: production values that appear to drop with each passing outsourcing, shallow marketing, release dates that are crammed next to big releases, etc. This game didn't have a chance in hell (or Silent Hill, zing!).
I appreciate what you've done personally, Tomm. I imagine it has to be an uphill struggle for you as well. You are a good man to come onto these forums and take some licks.
Naturally you have 'inside' knowledge because you are an employee of this company. You also have an obligation to defend said company in public. Unfortunately there's nothing you can say that will change my opinion that Konami, as a company, has taken a severely unfortunate nosedive in quality (outside of Kojima Pro.) since the PS2 era... and corporate decisions made regarding the Silent Hill franchise since that time period are ones I generally don't agree with. This isn't just about Imamura, Tsuboyama, and Co. disappearing from the industry. This is also about teams like Climax UK, like Vatra, that seem to have fantastic ideas and vision, get the daunting task of making a game in a series with an extremely vocal fanbase, and, like I said, appear handicapped in budget and larger QA assistance.
That's all the ranting I have.
Sure, I'm likely way off base here, but it's just how "I" feel, as a consumer and a fan of this series. Again, thank you for taking time to talk to the various SH communities out there.