If I ever thought of an inside joke within the gaming industry, it would have to do with Hideo Kojima "quitting" the Metal Gear Solid series. I remember back when Metal Gear Solid 3 was coming out and it was said to be his last contribution to the series...but then Metal Gear Solid 4 came out, and he once again stated that it would be the his last title. I believed him -- I loved that game, and I would have found him hard pressed to come up with something after that.

Nope. Kojima-san worked on Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker as well. Kojima worked as a writer, producer, and director on the past three MGS games and, luckily and happily, it doesn't look like he's stopping any time soon.

The news broke during E3 when Shigenobu Matsuyama, producer of Metal Gear Solid: Rising, admitted that the tactical espionage action game creator might not be done with the series.

"I've been asked a lot, 'Is this going to be a side-story or spin-off to the MGS series?', but what I'm positioning is that there will be a Hideo Kojima game that is MGS, but what we are planning as Kojima Productions is have this Raiden Rising as almost as a standard so that there's an MGS and the Rising going back-and-forth in the future."

That's a pretty dense statement, but extracting the information from it, it's a pretty safe bet to say that Hideo Kojima will not be giving up the series he is best known for just yet. The only problem I can really see out of this comes from the fact that, after Metal Gear Solid 4, Solid Snake retired from combat, forever.

So, going from Matsuyama's statement, Raiden may have his own series of games while (possibly) a new protagonist takes over the mantle of Solid Snake. What could his designation be? They have already done "Solid", "Liquid", and "Naked", what could be left? Will it even be a snake at all? The part that's hardest about any of this is waiting for Kojima to make a formal announcement. Unfortunately, all we can do is merely speculate as to his intentions.

However, you can start playing the recently released Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker on your PSP today and get yourself back into your complicated plots, overly long cutscenes, and stealth gameplay mood. It's also worth noting that you can expect to see a port of Metal Gear Solid 3 on the Nintendo 3DS when it releases (that says a lot of the handheld's capability).

Source: Shack News