At one point during its development, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots “ran beautifully and smoothly” on the Xbox 360.
That’s according to Associate Game Producer Ryan Payton, who shares the revelations on Stephen L. Kent’s book The ultimate history of video games vol 2 (via extend the time).
In an interview with the book, Payton claimed that there was no exclusivity deal to ensure the game would only be released on PS3, and that the decision instead came down to the choice of disc format used on Microsoft’s console.
At one point, Payton says, Konami set up a team dedicated to seeing if the game could be ported to the Xbox 360.
“Despite the annoyance of my PS3 development colleagues, most of them were still hardcore Sony fans and were not in favor of spending resources on such testing,” Payton explains in the book.
They thought Metal Gear Solid 4 would look and run terribly on older and lower-end Microsoft hardware.
“One fateful day, the Konami R&D team hosted a meeting where we got to see the fruits of their labor – Metal Gear Solid 4 running beautifully and smoothly on Xbox 360.”
According to Beaton, although the port was possible on a technical level, it was not practical on a physical level.
Since PS3 games came on BD-ROMs that could hold up to 54GB of storage, and Xbox 360 games came on DVD-ROMs that could only hold up to 8.3GB, bringing Metal Gear Solid 4 to Xbox The 360 required putting a game on many discs, something Konami wasn’t willing to do.
This was backed up at the time by Sony’s Jack Tritton, who once said: “Metal Gear Solid [4] Not exclusively on PS3, it’s only possible on PS3 thanks in part to Blu-ray. “
Konami announced last month that a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3 titled Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater will be released for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
It will also release the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection series, the first volume of which will contain Metal Gear Solid 1-3 in addition to the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2.
Metal Gear Solid 4 has never been re-released in any other format, which means it remains a PS3 exclusive to this day. It remains to be seen if volume 2 of the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection series will contain a port of the game.
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