It was heartbreaking when, after the entire Konami-Kojima fallout, the promising looking Silent Hills, best known thanks to the short playable demo that was put on PSN exclusively for PS4 last Gamescom to generate some early hype for it, was canceled. A lot of players wanted to see how the game would pan out- a lot of them wanted Sony to come in and negotiate and mediate, and revive the project.
That hasn’t happened, but something else has. According to Rooster Teeth, an anonymous source has told them that Microsoft has stepped in and revived Silent Hills, purchasing the title for the Xbox One as an exclusive, and are planning to reveal it at E3 this year. The source goes on to say that the complete pulling of P.T. from PSN was done by Konami as a show of good faith to Microsoft, which makes sense, I guess.
Whereas that sounds like an entertaining (and desirable- no matter how it happens, one would want such a promising project to be revived) premise, there are certain aspects of this leak that raise some flags- for instance, the source seems to claim that the game is 80% complete, and could release as early as March of next year. That sounds unlikely, given that the game was only in the earliest stages of pre-production when it was canned, and that it was supposed to enter development after Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was released later this year. The source also claims that Microsoft has spent ‘billions’ on acquiring and securing the title, which sounds like an exorbitant amount to spend on a niche game (albeit might just be an embellishment of reporting).
Could this still be true? Sure. Is it? Hard to say. The source did say that Microsoft would officially announce the deal at E3 this year, so we’re going to have to hang on tight until then. We’ll keep you posted though.