On the heels of the teaser sites and advertisements published by Konami and Kojima Productions comes another rumor out of a Twitter account: apparently, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots will be coming to the XBOX360 in the means of a port named "Metal Gear Solid 4 + Oxide" (or some derivative of that).
The 'tip' comes from a Twitter account by the name of Game Fork, an account on which the tipper created specifically for name dropping upcoming games and peripherals presumably to be revealed at Microsoft's press conference at E3 in a couple of days. "MS E3 big drops," Game Fork writes, "Xbox Fluid - New Motion camera! Splinter Cell Conviction Halo ODST Alan Wake APB Metal Gear Solid 4 + Oxide (Show Finale)". He or she then went on to clarify with further posts - "Yes. Metal gear solid + Oxide is one title. :)", and "For the questions about MGS+O being show finale: Konami will announce a 360 exclusive (NOBODY outside of Kon has been told what this is)...".
There are a few things about the account itself that are as mysterious as the (let's face it, crappy) name "Metal Gear Solid 4 + Oxide". For one, all of Game Fork's Twitter posts are logged from the web. That means that this person is logging on to Twitter to post updates - something that he or she probably wouldn't be doing if they were hanging around a building owned by Microsoft. Then there are the strange times of posting - unruly hours in the morning. What are the chances of this being a substantial rumor?
"The person also appears to be British, since he claims to have "no links to Sony or SCEE"--Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, based in London--and follows Queen's English spelling rules." That's from GameSpot.com and Tor Thorsen, who posted a fairly in-depth article about the updates coming out of Game Fork. Kotaku spoke to Microsoft group product manager Aaron Greenberg, who said:
"I can confirm that this post is completely uninformed and does not even come close to matching our news for E3. You can't believe everything you read, but it is fun to see people trying to guess what will be shown at the show and we are excited to sharing our real news with everyone on June 1st."
That's a pretty definitive statement. "For the record," Kotaku's Stephen Totilo writes, "Microsoft took the unusual step prior to this E3 of not participating int he traditional spring pre-E3 Game Critics' tour. So while outlets including this one are sitting on embargoed news from the likes of EA and Activision — and on info offered by major publishers who ran their own satellite pre-E3 exhibitions — Microsoft has shown nothing to the press. If Game Fork is a real leak, he or she is not leaking from a press tour in the U.S. Maybe he's a viral marketer..."
There's one thing for certain: we will not see a port of Metal Gear Solid 4 for the XBOX360 made by Konami - ever. The game is too highly tweaked for the PlayStation 3 for it to be simply dumped onto Microsoft's hardware. The Twitter account is probably a fake - but it does leave you wondering what Konami will bring to the 360 when the beginning of June comes around. I would be very surprised if the next Metal Gear title, or Hideo Kojima title for that matter, is a Sony exclusive.
November 24, 2009. That is a day that every Metal Gear fan will mark down in their diaries for years to come. For that is the day that Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, that great game we all love, and the best game in the Metal Gear series, will be destroyed forever.
Former James Bond novelist Raymond Benson novelized the first Metal Gear Solid. It was of average quality. The writing was riddled with cliches, and the quality of writing was what one would expect from a writer just beginning in his or her career. Now, I don't know if you know this, but Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is a pretty complicated game. A whole melange of postmodern stuff is going on. And, Raymond Benson, as good a James Bond novelist as he may have been, is perhaps not the best choice of writer to tackle such a project. He's a perfectly good thriller novelist - but Metal Gear Solid 2 is not a thriller of a game. It's deep. It's very confusing. It's very Haruki Murakami.
Haruki Murakami would be the perfect writer for a Sons of Liberty novel. But he'd never do it. Unless, of course, he saw how rad Metal Gear Solid 2 was and decided to write it. But that would never happen either. So, we're stuck with Benson. I might be wrong. He might surprise us all, and, believe me, I would love for that to happen.
Here are some excerpts from the first novel.
“Oh! You gave me a start, Doctor,” the gray-haired politician said. It always had struck Clark that the president was a very nervous type when he wasn’t in front of a camera. She rather enjoyed scaring the poor man; that was ironic because she was a woman, albeit a woman with a commanding presence and powerful charisma.
And,
The president squeamishly turned away from the window and waved his hand around the chamber, indicating the hundreds of stalactites on the limestone ceiling. “Do any of those things ever fall?”
He doesn't sound very president-like to me. Do you see what I mean about the writing style? It reads like something you'd see published on the internet, like an eBook. I'm just concerned. Concerned. I probably won't read it anyway, but... Best of luck to you anyway, sir. I hope you do the game justice.
On the premiere episode of 1UP.com's new flagship podcast, the age old debate has been revived again: will Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots be ported to the XBOX 360? The answer: nobody cares. But for the sake of discussion, here's an excerpt.
SAM KENNEDY: ...don't you think Metal Gear Solid 4 is going to come out for 360 at some point?
JOHN DAVISION: Yeah. Of course.
SAM KENNEDY: They’re looking at those year-in sales of, like, not even two million of MGS4 … they have to.
GARNETT LEE: Well, …
SAM KENNEDY: It’s been hinted at for a long time, it just –
GARNETT LEE: – ’09, right?
SAM KENNEDY: Yeah.
GARNETT LEE: I would say.
JOHN DAVISON: I would be shocked if it doesn’t come this year.
There's been enough said on this topic, and most people are sick of it - all people should be sick of it. My only concern is that they would potentially have to gimp Guns of the Patriots for it to make it onto the 360. That is, if Ryan Payton is to be believed that Metal Gear Solid 4uses up almost a full dual layer Blu-Ray. Do people really want to play Metal Gear Solid 4 so much to accept it being released on multiple discs?
Would it be cheaper to produce a multiple disc DVD game as opposed to a single Blu-Ray? I don't know, I'm not a marketing manager. It would make Konami money, no doubt - but is it even possible? I'm not very sure.
Don't forget that Hideo Kojima is actually one of the directors at Konami, and although he hasn't said much against Microsoft, he was abundantly clear that he wanted Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots to be exclusive to the PlayStation 3.
I don't own an XBOX 360, mostly because there aren't enough games on the platform that interest me to justify my buying a 360 (although I might just get an Arcade sooner or later to play the Gears of War of which people speak of). And I wouldn't re-buy Guns of the Patriots on the 360 unless it had a big fat wad of extra features. But then again, I'm not the market: 360 owners are.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots for the 360? When they can answer the simple technical question "How?", then I'm sure we will see it. Metal Gear Solid 5 for 360 or the next Microsoft console? Definitely.
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