Driving stale, decreasingly popular franchises into the ground is what killed Konami*.
* - Can be interchanged with Namco or 90% of the major Japanese publishers of the PSX-PS2 era.
Agree on Namco, disagree on Konami.
If anything, Konami didn't milk ENOUGH. They really didn't push Guitar Freaks or Drum Mania games outside of the USA, never releasing them and the result? Rock Band comes out 10 years later after the fact, and takes over. Same for Guitar Hero. Konami did this idea about ten years prior and did nothing for the western markets, only catering to their own Japanese arcades and home markets.
Sure, they pushed DDR at one point and that was a pretty big success at the time, but it doesn't excuse Konami's inaction in regards to Guitar Freaks and Drum Mania.
They have Suikoden games, and instead of giving the team a fucking budget to work with and advertising them and trying to go head to head with Final Fantasy (and I think Suikoden could have at one point given the right amount of support from the higher ups) they decide to give the team less and less support until the series is dead in the water.
I think Konami has a lot under their belt, but fail to advertise correctly in regards to potential customers, which was hardly Namco's problem. Konami HAD the games, and lots of them. Mostly unique ones and lots of ip's too, but constantly KILLED their own series' by making flat out bad decisions. The Konami shooters (Gradius, Parodius), Suikoden, anything Benami (especially in this age of Kinect), Castlevania, Silent Hill among others have been greatly disserviced by the company.
Namco is the not-so inventive studio who only knows how to milk. Konami (alongside Capcom) was the innovator, they just (unlike Capcom) never knew how to get a new ip off the ground.
