Monday, December 18, 2006

´Metal Gear Solid 4´ no longer PS3 exclusive?, part II



The latest and highly anticipated installment in the hit series ´Metal Gear Solid´ will not be PlayStation exclusive, industry insider Daniel Boutros claims. On his blog Noooz, he reveals that an Xbox360 version of MGS4 has been confirmed behind closed doors.


It's coming a few months later than the PS3 game, but it's happening folks.

This is said to be because publishers - including Konami - don't believe there'll be enough PS3s out there by the time the game hits because of the blu ray diode failure issues. (...)

This came pretty much from the horse's mouth, so you can count on this being legit.



This is the second time rumours about MGS4 going multiplatform surface. In late October, gaming magazine EGM wondered if the game was coming to Xbox360. I regard this as a likely scenario, especially since the PS3 is drastically lagging in sales and struggling to get past the million mark.

Consider this alongside the news that a PlayStation3 game must sell at least 500.000 units in order to break even, as Namco president Takeo Takasu told Bloomberg in late November.

According to various sources, Sony has managed to sell between 500.000 and 800.000 consoles by now. Economically speaking, publishing MGS4 exclusively on PS3 makes no sense whatsoever.

Although it should be noted that exclusivity in the games industry has always been a relative term. After all, ´MGS2: Substance´ was released on Xbox only one year after ´MGS2: Sons of Liberty´ came out for PS2. So the real question here is how soon will an Xbox360 version of MGS4 show?

Sources: Noooz, Bloomberg
Thanks to: Joystiq, Kotaku

5 comments:

RGB said...

If it makes PS3 weaker I am all for it, however I dont like even more than Sony going down is MS going up. I hope they destroy each other really. Only good thing a 2nd console being around is to enforce competition. I guess also that its good to have a 2nd option, but speaking for myself I have always been happy with what Nintendo brings out. It is pretty much the games that make the system anyway.

As for the guy in the previous topic about people camping out. I find that very interesting for a 2nd batch, has that happened before?

Anonymous said...

“According to various sources, Sony has managed to sell between 500.000 and 800.000 consoles by now. Economically speaking, publishing MGS4 exclusively on PS3 makes no sense whatsoever.”

I disagree with that statement, but that is beside the point. The thing is it doesn’t really matter how many units of PS3 have been sold to date. The contracts have already been signed. Just like Capcom and the Resident Evil exclusives for the GameCube. Sure Capcom wanted out of the deal but they signed a contract before GameCube was released so they were trapped. Thus for you have seen the release of RE: 4 on PS2 soon as the contract expired.

I think you are jumping the gun with this speculation (going by launch sales alone will always be poor means of measuring a consoles success). Of course Wii and obviously 360 have sold more units then the PS3, most analyst have predicted this months ago. The majority consensus points to 2007 as being the deciding year for all three consoles.

I’m not saying Sony will be number one or even number two; all I’m saying is that using about three weeks of sales makes for poor means to base speculations.

RGB said...

And I hope to have my stepdown transformer in a few days so I can finally play my Wii and Wario Ware.

The only thing I will be pissed about is if Nintendo bring out a new colour so early. I REALLY wanted a black one badly and was so disappointed they didnt bring it instead of the gay white one.

I also bought a DS and there is another rumour of a 2nd revision of the Lite about a larger screen (3.5 to 3.8"). I will also be pissed about that. Dont milk us Nintendo.

Falafelkid said...

Hi Some Guy.

Thanks for your valid points. I would like to reply to some.

The contracts have already been signed.

A good point. However, we do not know if there is a clause in that contract that specified a certain number of consoles that would have to be sold before the contract becomes valid.

A clause like this would make great sense, since it would prevent a game license being dormant in case of unforeseen developments (a hardware manufacturer going out of business or concentrating on software).

The majority consensus points to 2007 as being the deciding year for all three consoles. (...) All I’m saying is that using about three weeks of sales makes for poor means to base speculations.

I never talked about which console was going to come first in the long run. This is all about installed base up until the launch of MGS4.

Fair enough, it is scheduled for late 2007. But Konami can do no more than look at the current data in order to predict what sales may be like then, which is all I am doing.

And given that Sony has already underdelivered massively (shipping less than half the promised units to the US, for example), Konami must be considering making the game multiplatform.

It will all be down to the contract. But there will be some kind of opt-out clause in it, if Sony does not deliver in one way or another.

And, finally, if Mr. Boutros writes that his source is legit (and EGM has heard the same rumour separately), I expect it to be true.

julencin2000 said...

We could say:

So the real question here is how soon will a Wii version of MGS4 show?

And we could answer:

When Wii sales hit 6 million barrier.

Regards.