Fact of the matter is after 1998 Konami had only 4 viable franchises. Contra (which really hasn't had a great game in years and had been surpassed by Metal Slug), Castlevania (which they've only been publishing for the most part not developing), Winning Eleven Soccer (which has essentially been made obsolete by EA's FIFA games), and the Metal Gear games (which Kojima was getting tired of doing). After Kojima left, I thought that was a death blow to Konami. Also I think the advent of mobile gaming just makes more sense for Japanese developers. Most Japanese are abandoning console games, hell even Nintendo is outsourcing Mario to get on tablets and cell phones.