Hideo Kojima is one of the best, most talented game developers of all time- which is why he can generally get away with a lot of things that other developers would not be able to get away with. One of those things, it is believed, are the delays that are an almost expected part of a Kojima game’s development cycle. It is believed that Kojima routinely misses milestones and deadlines, with his games getting delayed repeatedly and production budgets spiralling out of control.
The end result is almost always a masterpiece, and massively successful, which is why he can get away with it repeatedly- but at this point, for example, no one takes an announced release date for a Kojima game seriously.
However, Kojima himself does not agree with his assessment regarding his inability to meet deadlines. “The one big misconception about myself is that I don’t stick to deadlines, I don’t keep to my schedule. Like I’ve said before, if you can’t do that, you can’t be a creator. This is something that I’m very serious about doing, this is a very big misconception about myself,” he said frankly in an interview with Greg Miller at RTX Sydney.
I can believe that he has a lot of discipline, and that he sticks to his own schedule- however, the fact that his games take far too long to make is undeniable. I can only attribute it to Kojima’s own timetable, which he does stick to, often not coinciding with timetables that his fans or publishers may have.
