Today we learned a very interesting piece of information about it Metal Gear Solid 4: Weapons of the Patriots. You know, this great title in the series created by Hidéo Kojima that didn’t have an Xbox release. All this because of an exclusivity negotiated with Sony. Surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to have been a contract with the Japanese company, but rather a conscious choice by the Konami developers!
It goes through the book The Ultimate History of Video Games Volume 2, and in particular from one of the game’s producers, Ryan Payton, we learn the real reasons for this absence. Apparently, during development on PlayStation, Konami sent a team to check the game’s feasibility on Xbox 360. The programmers, big Sony fans and already exhausted by the PS version, were not inclined to focus on an Xbox version. ” They thought MGS 4 would run very poorly on older, technologically outdated hardware.” But at the insistence of the company management, the test was carried out anyway, with the result: ” MGS 4 worked like this surprisingly solid and fluid on Xbox 360.”
So why not continue down this path? Simply because of the storage system. Dematerialization was not as widespread in 2008 as it is today. The PlayStation came with a Blu-Ray player with 54GB of storage. While the Xbox only had hard drives with a much smaller capacity, namely 8.3 GB. MGS 4 multiple discs would have been required, but Konami refused.
Very sad news for us Xbox players who have never had the chance to try this video game monster. In the age of complete remakes/remasters, can we hope for an early release? Konami is back at the front of the stage… fingers crossed!
The trailer of Metal Gear Solid 4 on PS3:
