Ryan Payton, the assistant producer on Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was once “running beautifully and smoothly” on Xbox 360, despite the game eventually being released as a PS3-exclusive.
Speaking in The Ultimate History of Video Games Vol 2, Payton revealed that MGS4 didn’t actually have an exclusivity deal to ensure it would only come out on Sony’s console, and that the decision to release it on PS3 only was down to the disc format used for Xbox 360.
Unlike the PS3, the Xbox 360 did not utilise Blu-ray discs for its games, which are capable of storing much more data. So, while technically Microsoft’s console could run MGS4, it wasn’t possible physically without putting it on multiple discs – something that Konami wasn’t keen on doing.
Despite how downtrodden my colleagues were with developing on PS3, most of them were still hardcore Sony fans and were not in favour of spending resources on such a test. They believed Metal Gear Solid 4 would look and run terribly on Microsoft’s older and inferior hardware.
One fateful day, the Konami R&D team hosted a meeting where we got to see the fruits of their labour – Metal Gear Solid 4 running beautifully and smoothly on an Xbox 360.
Metal Gear Solid 4 was released 15 years ago this month on PS3, and you can read our full review here. The game remains exclusive to the PS3 to this day, so if you want to play it, you had better dust off your console. It remains to be seen whether or not it will be packaged in future instalments in Konami’s Metal Gear: The Master Collection series.
[Source – Time Extension]