Konami rides strong sales of Peace Walker, PES 2010 to Q1 profit jump

Step 1: A handheld Metal Gear game that doesn't somehow involve card games or evil puppets. Step 2: Anything even tangentially related to football during World Cup season. Step 3: A creepy Japanese girlfriend simulator. Step 4: Question marks - many of them related to Japan's societal well-being.

Step 5: Profit.

Konami's Q1 financial results are in, and we have to imagine the publisher's offices actually sound pretty similar to a World Cup stadium right now. Yep, we can practically feel our blood boiling and our good mood evaporating as vile Vuvuzelas "sing" out to the tune of an operating profit of 1.27 billion yen ($14.8 million).

That's a 244 percent jump from last year's 367 million yen ($4.26 million), which sounds about right considering the publisher's surefire success double-whammy of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and its PES/World Soccer Winning Eleven series. Konami also attributed much of its profit spike to a Japanese DS "romance communication game" called Love Plus. Apparently, the game's "new twist" is "enjoying daily life with a girlfriend whose heart the player has captured." We're saying nothing.

Thanks, Gamasutra.