Kojima: MGS4 Too Big for Blue-Ray
Solid Snake's PS3 Release Had To Be Compressed
Metal Gear Solid 4 is apparently too big a game for even the mighty Blue-Ray format to hold. Creator Hideo Kojima admits to being forced to compress Solid Snake.
In a recent interview published in the Japanese Hatimaki blog, Metal Gear series creator Hideo Kojima revealed that he was forced to compress parts of Metal Gear Solid 4 in order to fit the game onto a Blue-Ray disc.
While videogame compression is nothing new, the fact that even Blue-Ray's gargantuan 50GB storage capacity wasn't enough to hold all of Kojima's vision is raising a few eyebrows. Nonetheless, the mastermind behind Solid Snake is assuring fans that all of MGS4 made it onto the disc. However, he does confess that if his team had had more space to work with, the game might've come out a little more polished.
Blue-Ray Compression Coming at a Cost?
It's unclear at this point exactly what's making Metal Gear Solid 4 take up an unprecedented amount of space. The easy answer would be the eye-popping graphics, but it will be difficult to say until the game is actually released.
One hint that Kojima’s team was forced to make concessions in order to squeeze the game onto a single disc is the recent announcement that Metal Gear Solid 4 will include region-specific voice acting. This indicates that despite Blue-Ray’s ample storage capacity it was still impossible to include multilingual voiceovers in each version of the game.
Metal Gear Solid 4 Solid Snake's Last Stand?
Hideo Kojima has been at the helm of the Metal Gear series since the very first title was released for the NES back in 1987. The original Metal Gear Solid for the PS1 is almost universally considered the game that put the series on the map, selling over 6 million copies worldwide. This, despite facing near-impossible competition from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which was released for the Nintendo 64 only a month later. The game was even remade for the GameCube in 2004 under the title Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.
Metal Gear Solid 4 has been hyped as the “killer-app” for the PlayStation 3 since before the console was even launched. The game has been delayed a seemingly innumerable amount of times and may be a do-or-die title for the struggling PS3. Kojima publicly stated early in MGS4's development that it will be the last Metal Gear game produced with his name attached and the final entry to star series mainstay Solid Snake.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is currently set for a worldwide release on June 12th and will also be available as part of a special edition bundle that includes an 80GB PS3 and a Dualshock 3 controller.
