Fox Engine Director Has Left Konami, Reports Claim

Konami's worldwide technology director in charge of overseeing the creation of the Fox Engine has left the company, according to reports from Gameblog and IGN.

Julien Merceron joined Konami in October 2013, following a four-year spell at Crystal Dynamics and its publisher Square Enix.

Under Merceron's watch, Konami developed Fox Engine in-house, and has gone to use it for the development of recently released titles including Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, and PES 2016.

The circumstances surrounding Merceron's departure are not clear. It is not uncommon for employees to leave game companies following the shipping of big projects. GameSpot has contacted Konami for a statement on the matter.

In May 2015, Konami president Hideki Hayakawa said the company will "pursue mobile games aggressively" going forward, and that smartphones will be considered as its "main platform."

"Our main platforms will be mobiles," he began. "Gaming has spread to a number of platforms, but at the end of the day, the platform that is always closest to us, is mobile. Mobile is where the future of gaming lies.

"With multiplatform games, there's really no point in dividing the market into categories anymore. Mobiles will take on the new role of linking the general public to the gaming world."

Amidst discussion this was a clear sign of the publisher backing away from the console gaming, Konami released a statement it was interested in producing content for all the platforms available to it.

"Konami will continue to embrace the challenge of creating entertainment content via different platforms," it said. "Not only mobile platforms, but for home consoles, arcade units, and cards, to meet the changing needs of the times."

Discussing the organisational changes, Hayakawa said the company has adopted a "centralised production division system," which was implemented to make it easier to react to changes in the market.