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Sony didn’t pay for Metal Gear Solid 4 exclusivity ; Kojima did not want to make the port for Xbox 360

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Keihart

Member
if this was indeed true...

If you think MGS4 is bad, imagine the trashfire it would have been if they tried to port it after having so little confidence on doing so.
if you think MGS4 is good, imagine it not been as good because now it had to put resources and make consecions related to 2 platforms.

Either way, if anything, this frames how complicated porting can be. Even more so when a game is doing either weird shit or using a very custom engine that wasn't made with the foresight of other platforms.
You gotta consider, if Kojima felt that porting the game was not a problem, he could've use that to squeeze some extra money or resources from Konami to make the game even bigger since he would be now targeting a more than double target audience.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
FF13 made it on the 360. MGS4 could have as well.

Ah well. Because of his bone headed decision, MGS4 is now stuck on the PS3 with only high-end PC emulation as an alternative.

I can easily bet it would have received Xbox BC treatment to keep it on modern platforms, likely with resolution and FPS boosts.
 

arvfab

Banned
People should realize that 3rd party exclusives can exist for other reasons other than directly paying for them.

Sometimes it's because of technical reasons, like for this one.

Sometimes it's because a port doesn't make sense from a business perspective (many Atlus games).

Sometimes it's because a game is fully/partially funded and/or co-developed, like Street Fighter 5 (funnily, SF6 - no matter if multi or exclusive - only exists because of this...) or Bayonetta 2/3.

Sometimes it's timed because of missing ressources, often seen with indie games, where devs launch one version at a time (sometimes even funding other versions with the sales of the "exclusive" one).
 

Swift_Star

Banned
see I read this as "Xbox 360 users not stupid enough to buy dogshit game" 🤣

but you can't compare that to an action game which were prominently represented on 360 and were right up the alley of the demographic that had a 360
MGS series was born as a PS game. I don't think it really had an audience on Xbox.
 

Neofire

Member
[/URL]

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots debuted in March 2005 on PlayStation 3 and has not been available on any other platform since then. Due to the above, many have thought that Sony paid some kind of exclusivity, but the reality is different and it happens that Metal Gear Solid 4 is exclusive to PlayStation 3 because Hideo Kojima did not want to make the port for Xbox 360 .

This was revealed thanks to Steven L. Kent, author of The Ultimate History of Video Games . For the second volume of this book, Kent interviewed former Kojima Productions developer Ryan Petton about Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and his history with Sony.

According to the former Kojima Productions member, Sony did not pay for an exclusivity on Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots . In fact, what happened is that Kojima simply decided that he didn’t want to port it to Xbox 360, and it seems that Konami officials agreed with this decision.


WHY DIDN’T KOJIMA WANT TO RELEASE METAL GEAR SOLID 4 ON XBOX 360?​

But why didn’t Kojima want to bring Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots to Xbox 360? At the moment the situation is not clear. However, it seems that it all has to do with the fact that the game is too big and that the Xbox 360 games came on DVD, which would have meant that the game would have had to be offered on a lot of discs.

This is believed because, in a 2013 interview , Kojima said that Metal Gear Solid: Legacy Collection would not come out on Xbox 360 because Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots never had an Xbox 360 version and the explanation is that his amount of information was “just very huge.”

I am sorry to report that an Xbox 360 version will not be released because an Xbox 360 version of Metal Gear Solid 4 has not been released. To explain the situation, the amount of data in Metal Gear Solid 4 is just too huge,” Kojima explained.

So it seems that Kojima thought that releasing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots on Xbox 360 was just too complicated. We’ll see if at some point Konami decides that it’s worth releasing this game on more platforms so it doesn’t get lost.
Talk about beating a dead horse lol
 
mgsxbox1.png

And bundled with a HDD to boot.

Edit: i was wrong about the 360s HDD size. It was the PS3 that had a 20GB drive not the 360.

Edit 2: The cheaper PS3 I mean.
 
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MadViking

Member
MGS4 is around 27GB so it would fit on 4 discs or 3 (with some compression). But it would for sure require some installation on HDD, I'm not sure if MS allowed this at the time.
 

Ev1L AuRoN

Member
Koji-san didn't want it to deal with DVD. His cinematic aspirations probably are to blame. Metal Gear 4 has a ton of videos and high quality audio, that would probably be compressed to fit two DVD's on 360. Or worst, cut content.
 

Thaedolus

Member
MGS4 is around 27GB so it would fit on 4 discs or 3 (with some compression). But it would for sure require some installation on HDD, I'm not sure if MS allowed this at the time.
I don’t think they did as the base 360 model didn’t have a hard drive. And people probably forget that a) multi platform AAA games like this weren’t ubiquitous like they are now…exclusivity, timed or otherwise, was more the norm whereas now it’s a rarity for 3rd parties, and b) the B squad usually handled ports after the fact. I’m sure Kojima never touched any of the ports for MGS or MGS 2 which ended up on PC and Xbox.

I’m sure it’s technologically feasible to put MGS4 on X360 by dividing the chapters up over multiple discs, the game already requires multiple installs. But I can’t blame Kojima for not wanting to add to his dev time on the project
 

MadViking

Member
I don’t think they did as the base 360 model didn’t have a hard drive. And people probably forget that a) multi platform AAA games like this weren’t ubiquitous like they are now…exclusivity, timed or otherwise, was more the norm whereas now it’s a rarity for 3rd parties, and b) the B squad usually handled ports after the fact. I’m sure Kojima never touched any of the ports for MGS or MGS 2 which ended up on PC and Xbox.

I’m sure it’s technologically feasible to put MGS4 on X360 by dividing the chapters up over multiple discs, the game already requires multiple installs. But I can’t blame Kojima for not wanting to add to his dev time on the project
Yeah, I don't remember any X360 game that requires HDD to run. Maybe there were some late games that required it. I only recall GTA3 ran much better from HDD but it was still optional and BF3 had texture pack that required HDD, but the game itself could still be run straight from disc.

So if they had to duplicate a lot of data on each disc then it could be more than 4 and maybe not even possible/very difficult with the 7GB DVDs.
 

Urban

Member
MGS4 is around 27GB so it would fit on 4 discs or 3 (with some compression). But it would for sure require some installation on HDD, I'm not sure if MS allowed this at the time.
Lost Odyssey was also 4 DVDs.
But i dont recall what happend if you wanted go back to places to a Disc before?
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Koji-san didn't want it to deal with DVD. His cinematic aspirations probably are to blame. Metal Gear 4 has a ton of videos and high quality audio, that would probably be compressed to fit two DVD's on 360. Or worst, cut content.

No need to cut or compress, 360 had games on 4 discs as well.

Hell, it would have made so much sense to have each 'act' of the game be on a separate disc. PS3 versions install them, on 360 you could just change the disc to start the new act.
 

MadViking

Member
Lost Odyssey was also 4 DVDs.
But i dont recall what happend if you wanted go back to places to a Disc before?
You can go back to previous section without changing disc. Some data are duplicated on each.
Apparently Titanfall required HDD, but this was at the very late stage of 360 life (2014), so probably that's why they allowed it. I doubt MS would allow HDD only game around 2008-2010.
 
Kojima didn't want to be dealing with trying to fit 30GB of data on a 8GB disc.
That is 3 disc.
Some games had alot of disc's.

Plus didn't x360 and ps3 had internet?

He had alot of option. But opted out the easy way.
At the time a 360 dvd only held 6.8gb of data, and metal gear solid 4 used a dual layer Blu ray which was 50gb. Uncompressed, that would be 8 360 DVDs...

If you're asking about patches kingfey kingfey , 360 for the majority of the generation had a strict 3mb patch limit, so devs could really only fix small bugs.

A policy which was great because it was a deterrent to ship an unfinished game.
 

Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
As an early PS3 owner, sounds like 360 owners lucked out. Never been more disappointed with a game in my life.

*makes fun of swapping discs*
*also makes you sit through 5-10 min installs between acts*

I know right? Also changing discs was a fun novelty for me back in the day. Like when I did it in a certain game called Metal Gear Solid...
 
That is 3 disc.
Some games had alot of disc's.

Plus didn't x360 and ps3 had internet?

He had alot of option. But opted out the easy way.

It explains why him and Konami had a fallout lately. You dont do stupid stuff like these, and miss out on those sales.

Then again it's Kojima. He lives in his own world.
3x8 =24 not 30... it would have needed 4 discs which would have been insane, lol.
Edit
But you're right, they could have let people download a portion of the game or entirely like developer's are doing now.
 
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MadViking

Member
3x8 =24 not 30... it would have needed 4 discs which would have been insane, lol.
Lost odyssey is on 4 discs. It's not insane at all. And there are several games on 3 discs (FF13, Blue Dragon)

MGS4 has 5 acts plus epilogue. So I'm pretty certain they could fit one act on each disc. With some extra work and a little compression it would fit on 3 or 4 discs.
 
Lost odyssey is on 4 discs. It's not insane at all. And there are several games on 3 discs (FF13, Blue Dragon)

MGS4 has 5 acts plus epilogue. So I'm pretty certain they could fit one act on each disc. With some extra work and a little compression it would fit on 3 or 4 discs.
Lost odyssey is on 4 discs? That's insane, lmao
 

jaysius

Banned
The real reason is that PS3 CELL was hard to code for, there would be a TON of work to port the game over to the 360 architecture.
 

jaysius

Banned
Lost odyssey is on 4 discs? That's insane, lmao
Not a huge issue at all, there was 20-30 hours on a disc, once you swapped disc you didn't have to swap back during gameplay.

Disc swapping was the stupidest weakest part of the PS3 vs 360 console war. In the 360 era it was almost a complete non-issue.
 

VAVA Mk2

Member
Now no one will ever play it again (besides PS3) as being developed for Cell makes it impossible to port to even PS4 or PS5.
 

solidus12

Member
They can still have hardware based emulation on PS6 ie, including the cell processor on the motherboard 🥹
 
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Rykan

Member
MGS series was born as a PS game. I don't think it really had an audience on Xbox.
A lot of previous PS owners jumped ship to the Xbox 360 during that period though.

I think MGS4 would have been quite popular on the Xbox 360 and this was probably a missed opportunity.

At the time a 360 dvd only held 6.8gb of data, and metal gear solid 4 used a dual layer Blu ray which was 50gb. Uncompressed, that would be 8 360 DVDs...

If you're asking about patches kingfey kingfey , 360 for the majority of the generation had a strict 3mb patch limit, so devs could really only fix small bugs.

A policy which was great because it was a deterrent to ship an unfinished game.
The PSN version of the game is only 30 GB so without compression that would take take 5 discs. well 4.4 discs technically, so if they can somehow shrink that size down slighty either through compression or removal of content like MGO, it could probably fit on 4 disks.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?


+ All the PlayStation stuff in the game: Sunny’s PSP and PS3 on the Nomad plane, and Snake’s robot which is controlled by a DualShock 3.

You can also shake your controller to make Rose’s boobs jiggle during the codec conversations.



All of that can be very easily replaced.

RE1 Remake had straight up game cubes as key devices, for the HD Remaster they redrew over them. Replacing 3D models should be a cinch.
 
I bought the HDDVD add on for the 360 when it was released. I don't think the game could fit on that either. I think it topped out at 25GB, could be misremembering.
I only ever bought 2 movies, King Kong, and the first Transformers movie. (Man what a great investment that was /s)
 

ACESHIGH

Banned
If anything I am more pissed about the HD collection not being on PC. Steam had already taken off by 2011/2012 when it was released. And it also had a 360 version.

MGS4 not releasing in anything but a PS3 makes sense in retrospective. The game released in 2008 and must have started development around 2004.

Look at the gaming landscape in 2004. Playstation dominated with an iron fist. Bill Russell Celtics style. PC gaming was around to start it's dark ages up until the early 10s. And it was basically an alien device in Japan (the dominant side of the gaming industry back then)

Xbox and Nintendo were footnotes in the home console market. The 360 changed everything and no one saw it coming. It made no sense to release the game in anything other than a PS3 due to sheer market dominance and the fact that it was the only console where all the prior metal gear games could be played. In such a heavy fanservice game, that's gotta count for something..

Also otacon was blowing Sony and the PS3 in every codec conversation. It was cringeworthy. How the heck do you rework all those Sony references in game. And the apple product placement?

It was a game designed for a different era of gaming. Maybe Konami will end up releasing the legacy collection on all platforms one day. Otherwise we have to rely on RPCS3.
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
This is pretty poor from him. If it had come to 360 there would be a high chance it would be playable on series x with a locked frame rate.

Probably the worst in the series anyway. The thought of having to watch those cutscenes again gives me shivers lol
Good thing it didn't. Saved yourself some masochistic suffering.
 

01011001

Banned
This is pretty poor from him. If it had come to 360 there would be a high chance it would be playable on series x with a locked frame rate.

Probably the worst in the series anyway. The thought of having to watch those cutscenes again gives me shivers lol

you can skip the cutscenes...
 

Swift_Star

Banned
the Metal Gear series was born as a Microsoft MSX game :) I don't think it really had an audience on Sony consoles when the third game came out on PS1 ;)
I specifically said the MGS as in SOLID.
This is not the gotcha you were expecting it to be as they’re not the same series.
And solid is a reboot, so, yeah, bad gotcha is bad.
 
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01011001

Banned
I specifically said the MGS as in SOLID.
This is not the gotcha you were expecting it to be as they’re not the same series.

yes, metal gear 3, subtitled Solid :) (that was literally why it's called Solid, notice how the Solid is written with a way smaller font?)

1280px-Metal_Gear_Solid_logo.svg.png
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
the Metal Gear series was born as a Microsoft MSX game :) I don't think it really had an audience on Sony consoles when the third game came out on PS1 ;)
And Sony ;) Where the game launched on the MSX2

Sony_HitBit_HB-10P_%28White_Background%29.jpg


And sure it did. A lot of those Japanese gamers were frothing at the mouth for MGS (the main gamers on the MSX/ASCII platform). Then it became a global hit due to how damned amazing it was at the time.
 

Swift_Star

Banned
yes, metal gear 3, subtitled Solid :) (that was literally why it's called Solid, notice how the Solid is written with a way smaller font?)

1280px-Metal_Gear_Solid_logo.svg.png
Yeah, that’s not how this works, since the subsequent games are numbered 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Failed gotcha yet again. Try harder next time.
 
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Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots debuted in March 2005 on PlayStation 3 and has not been available on any other platform since then. Due to the above, many have thought that Sony paid some kind of exclusivity, but the reality is different and it happens that Metal Gear Solid 4 is exclusive to PlayStation 3 because Hideo Kojima did not want to make the port for Xbox 360 .

This was revealed thanks to Steven L. Kent, author of The Ultimate History of Video Games . For the second volume of this book, Kent interviewed former Kojima Productions developer Ryan Petton about Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and his history with Sony.

According to the former Kojima Productions member, Sony did not pay for an exclusivity on Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots . In fact, what happened is that Kojima simply decided that he didn’t want to port it to Xbox 360, and it seems that Konami officials agreed with this decision.


WHY DIDN’T KOJIMA WANT TO RELEASE METAL GEAR SOLID 4 ON XBOX 360?​

But why didn’t Kojima want to bring Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots to Xbox 360? At the moment the situation is not clear. However, it seems that it all has to do with the fact that the game is too big and that the Xbox 360 games came on DVD, which would have meant that the game would have had to be offered on a lot of discs.

This is believed because, in a 2013 interview , Kojima said that Metal Gear Solid: Legacy Collection would not come out on Xbox 360 because Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots never had an Xbox 360 version and the explanation is that his amount of information was “just very huge.”

I am sorry to report that an Xbox 360 version will not be released because an Xbox 360 version of Metal Gear Solid 4 has not been released. To explain the situation, the amount of data in Metal Gear Solid 4 is just too huge,” Kojima explained.

So it seems that Kojima thought that releasing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots on Xbox 360 was just too complicated. We’ll see if at some point Konami decides that it’s worth releasing this game on more platforms so it doesn’t get lost.
This dude has his dates wrong. I know I was there, it and gta4 are why i got a ps3 after being pc exclusive from 2000 until 2008. The ps3 wasn't even created in 2005. It was just revieled at e3. MGS4 came out in 2008.
 

01011001

Banned
Yeah, that’s not how this works, since the subsequent games are numbered 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Failed gotcha yet again. Try harder next time.

so because they started to use the Solid subtitle as a main part of the franchise name going forward that makes it a completely different series?

it's pretty clear that that wasn't the original plan. they clearly only used Solid as the subtitle at first, maybe with plans to name subsequent titles after the different "Les Enfants Terribles" clones.

in an alternate timeline they might have called Metal Gear Solid 2, Metal Gear Liquid... or Metal Gear Solidus...

the name of a sequel is in big parts simply a way of marketing after all. and I bet Konami simply thought that the name Metal Gear Solid has now been solidified (no oun intended) in the minds of players as the name of the franchise, so it was used going forward
 
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