Of the numerous games released in the Metal Gear Solid series, Metal Gear Solid 4 is a particularly interesting title. Other than being available to play via PlayStation Now, Metal Gear Solid 4 never circulated outside the PlayStation 3. For the longest time, fans of the series thought that Metal Gear Solid 4 was meant to be a PlayStation exclusive, but according to new information, that wasn't actually the case.
Most in the gaming community consider Metal Gear Solid a Sony exclusive property given its consistent presence on Sony's platforms, but plenty of games in the series have found their way onto other platforms. For instance, Metal Gear Solid 2 received cross-platform releases on both the PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox back when it first launched in the early 2000s. Though, in the case of Metal Gear Solid 4, its exclusivity on the PlayStation 3 is considerably more circumstantial.
Ryan Payton, a former Kojima Productions employee, revealed in an interview with ResetEra that Metal Gear Solid 4 was never a Sony exclusive title. Payton would later explain that the people Hideo Kojima, the creator of the Metal Gear Solid series, answered would have gladly approved a port of Metal Gear Solid 4 to the Xbox 360, but Kojima made the conscious decision not to do so.
A radio show appearance that Kojima did back in 2013 recently surfaced as well, where Kojima explained that an Xbox 360 port of Metal Gear Solid 4 was next to impossible, due to the Xbox 360's hardware limitations. The PS3 was the first console to ever use Blu-Ray discs, which managed to hold massive amounts of game data, compared to the Xbox 360, which was still using DVD discs.
Therefore, the lack of cross-platform support for Metal Gear Solid 4 ultimately came down to technological differences between the PS3 and the Xbox 360. It's amazing how the public perception of Metal Gear Solid 4's exclusivity was unintentionally askew, but then again, it's easy to see why. Nowadays, especially, PlayStation's exclusive titles such as Uncharted 4, Persona 5, and Ghost of Tsushima are what sets PlayStation apart from other publishers.
In any case, it will be interesting to see if Metal Gear Solid 4's presence remains deadlocked on PS3. It's hard to know what Konami has in store for the Metal Gear Solid series if anything. As of late, Konami has barely done anything with its strongest franchises like Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, or Castlevania. Thus, it's unlikely that Metal Gear Solid 4 will move from the platform it's on.
Metal Gear Solid 4 is available now exclusively for the PlayStation 3.