Kojima’s Metal Gear franchise has been a coveted object in the world of video games since the PlayStation era where the game delivered a level of immersion that rivaled a Hollywood movie. Sons of Liberty matched all expectations from a sequel barring the fact that the protagonist was no longer Solid Snake, the hero of the series. When Metal Gear Solid 4 was announced for the PlayStation 3, it became a must have title for the console which was still early in its development stages and as time went by this exclusivity would be threatened continuously with numerous other coveted PlayStation franchises hopping onto the Xbox 360.
So why did the game never make an appearance onto the Xbox 360, though Final Fantasy XIII an equally big franchise did ultimately land up on the platform? Was it the development for the Xbox 360 (the running joke of it coming onto multiple discs)? Or was it the money that was put in development for the game, since it was rumored that Microsoft did not want to fund a game that had already started out on the PlayStation. This question has remained an unsolved mystery and then suddenly when PlayStation 3 loyalists were confident that the franchise would remain exclusive to their platform, it jumped ship.
Here is a possible reason why MGS4 never made it to Microsoft’s console. As the urban legend goes, it was as simple as not being able to achieve a release date that was in line with the PlayStation 3 version of the game. Apparently, Metal Gear Solid 4 was going to be a multiplatform game at one point in time. It was well into development when Microsoft’s 2006 business strategy of buying out third party titles had approached Konami. They wanted the game on their platform and were willing to put their money behind it with the clause of releasing the game either simultaneously with the PS3 version or have bare minimum lag for its release. The development team, however, could only port the game almost a year past its PS3 release date due to legal contractual obligations with Sony. This was something Square Enix could deliver on for FFXIII for the North American version of the game. Hence the idea was dropped.
So Microsoft went in another direction, they wanted another game to be developed for the franchise which was more in line with western audiences. The game, which ultimately turned out to be Metal Gear Solid: Rising, had been a side project within the original MGS4 development team. Microsoft decided to pick it up after what they saw from the prototype of the game and bring it onto their platform as well. Hence we got to see the focus of the game on Microsoft’s platform as opposed to the Sony. Metal Gear Solid: Rising is now rumoured to have a late 2011 release date on their platform.