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Metal Gear has pretty much been a PlayStation exclusive franchise (with the exception of the most recent games and Twin Snakes, of course), but as it turns out, that wasn’t necessarily the case. As noted in a recent book by Stephen L. Kent, Sony didn’t actually have the exclusive rights to Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
In Kent’s book The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 2: Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and the Billion-Dollar Battle to Shape Modern Gaming, former developer Kojima Productions confirmed that Kojima did not want to port Metal Gear Solid 4 to the Xbox 360.
The prevailing opinion in the industry was that Sony must have secured an exclusive deal for the game. It is not true. If Kojima decided to port the game to the Xbox 360, his superiors would certainly approve of this decision, but he was not ready to make the jump.
The reason Kojima didn’t bother to port Metal Gear Solid 4 had less to do with his own predispositions than with the Xbox 360’s hardware limitations. Xbox 360 due to the sheer size of MGS4 for that console.
Unfortunately, the Xbox 360 version is not being released because the Xbox 360 version of MGS4 hasn’t been released yet. To explain the situation, the amount of data in MGS4 is too huge.
The PS3 played Blu-ray discs, while the Xbox 360 used DVDs. Blu-rays have a much higher storage capacity than DVDs, so Metal Gear Solid 4 on the Xbox 360 would take up seven DVDs.
Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to play any of the older Metal Gears on current or even latest generation consoles. Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 were pulled from digital storefronts due to historical material licensing issues last year, and Metal Gear Solid 4 was pulled from PlayStation Now more recently. Konami has said it is looking into renewing its licenses, and perhaps a remastered PlayStation Now will bring back Metal Gear Solid 4 when it arrives in June.
