After booting out Kojima, Konami sells 6M copies of Metal Gear Solid V

Konami parted ways with legendary game designer Hideo Kojima last fall, just as he finished work on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. And last night, the Japanese company revealed that Metal Gear Solid V sold more than 6 million units.

Above: Hideo Kojima in New York

Image Credit: Eric Blattberg / GamesBeat

At retail, that’s an estimated $360 million in a single quarter, a very good result for a new video game in a very competitive holiday season.

In the last nine months ended Dec. 31, overall sales for the digital entertainment division was 93.4 billion yen ($771M) for the nine months ending December 31, 2015, up from 67.9 billion yen ($560M) the year prior. Profit for the division was 25.5 billion yen ($210M), a big bump over 10.7 billion ($88M) from the same period a year earlier.

The company also said that Pro Evolution Soccer, its soccer game, contributed a lot to the quarter. Konami also said it had a hit in mobile title Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyu.

Kojima, who was the best known game designer, resigned in December and signed a deal to make his next game for Sony. That was the end to what seemed to be a fractious relationship between Kojima and Konami management.

Kojima’s troubles with Konami have been well publicized, and many people expected that he would leave after the publication of MGSV. During the airing of The Game Awards, host Geoff Keighley said that a lawyer from Konami informed Kojima that he would not be allowed to travel from Japan to the U.S. to be present for the awards show. Kojima had worked with Konami since publishing his first Metal Gear game in 1987.