The Konami that created classic arcade and console series like Contra, Gradius, Castlevania, Metal Gear Solid, and Silent Hill continues its slow descent into an almost unrecognizable company this week, with word that it is now focusing on mobile phones as its "main platform."

The information comes from a NeoGAF translation of a Japanese interview with new Konami President Hideki Hayakawa, which seems to line up with a machine translation of the original Nikkei Trendy Net piece. In the translation, Hayakawa says that Konami will "pursue mobile games aggressively," and that "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."

"We hope that our overseas games such as Metal Gear Solid V and Winning Eleven continue to do well, but we are always thinking about how to push our franchises onto mobile there, too," Hayakawa continued. "With multiplatform games, there's really no point in dividing the market into categories anymore. Mobile will take on the new role of linking the general public to the gaming world."

Hayakawa goes on to say that the company will be strongly pursuing a "pay-as-you-play model" like the one that has seen success in the Winning Eleven and Power Pro sports series. "Our games must move from selling things like 'items' to selling things like 'features.'"

While a few console titles likeandwill continue to drip onto consoles from Konami, the home gaming market doesn't seem to be Konami's main focus anymore.

Word of the shift in focus comes after a few weeks of troubling news from the Japanese publisher, including apparent friction with Metal Gear Solid maker Hideo Kojima, a delisting from the New York Stock Exchange, and the baffling removal of acclaimed horror demo P.T. from the PlayStation Network. The company also announced in March that it was restructuring to a "headquarters-controlled system" that would be "capable of responding to the rapid market changes that surround our digital entertainment business."

Konami's apparent shift follows news from earlier this year that another major Japanese publisher of old, Sega/Sammy, would be restructuring to focus on the PC/mobile market, cutting hundreds of jobs in the process. While Sega and some of its subsidiary studios are still working on console games, those games won't be featured heavily at E3, where Sega will not be hosting a booth for the first time in the show's history.