Metal Gear Solid 4 Pushing 50GB, What is Really Going On?

March 3rd, 2008

metal gear solid 4 big boss

There I was preparing to post some article that I had written last week when a feed from IGN came in stating some mind boggling news. Something which I needed to share my feelings about.

In a recent issue of Famitsu famed game developer Hideo Kojima stated that they had to exclude some content from Metal Gear Solid 4 in order to keep the game’s file size under 50gb.

If you know me outside of the blog then you will know that I am no tech head, infact when it comes to technology I am quite the traditionalist. But ever since I have heard about it I have always been intrigued by the massive size of a Blu-ray disc. Its simply mind bending that two dual layer discs (50gb per disc, I am pretty sure that it is dual layered) are larger than your average computer harddrive.

50 giga bites is as IGN put it quite a terrifying size for a game, I want to just put this into perspective for a second.

Xbox 360 game disc/HD DVD

Single Layer – 15gb
Dual Layer – 30gb

Playstation 3 game disc/ Blu-Ray Disc

Single Layer – 25gb
Dual Layer – 50gb

Xbox 360 launch title examples:

Condemned: 3.9 GB
Madden 06 NFL: 3.3 GB
Dead or Alive 4: 5 GB
NBA 06: 4.5 GB

Source

DP’s Estimated range of Xbox 360 game sizes: 3-14+gb

Okay, so essentially the average next generation game for either console is roughly 10gb of data. So essentially that means that MGS4 is about 5x that of the average next generation game. Keeping in mind that they had to work within that 50gb limit.

Forget the Tech Talk, What Does All of This Mean?

Technical marvel aside, MGS4 is a large game so I want to share some of my suspected reasonings behind the massively large fill size.

Full 1080p Graphics

Its surprising that with the buzzword 1080p being thrown around like its quickly going out of fashion that so few video games actually run at that resolution. In another recent interview with Hideo Kojima he stated that they were still unsure on deciding a final resolution for the game. They were still in the optimizing stages. The outputted 1080p graphics obviously would have a strong effect on the game’s file size hence this could be a hint towards the game running in ‘true high definition’.

Plenty of Video, Cutscenes and Voice

This reason comes as no surprise, every Metal Gear Solid title has featured lengthy cinemas and plenty of voice work. Even though Metal Gear Solid 3 was toned down considerably I suspect that MGS4 may be the title to boast the most video and voice yet in the series. After all Konami need to tie together all of the loose ends and finally lift the lid on the Patriots and in my mind that is going to take a lot of context to support.

On the topic of context MGS4 will also feature flashbacks to prior games to help new players piece the saga together. There are also the supposively insane intro and outro movies in the game. More of that can be found here. Both would contribute to file size.

Extensive Bonus Material

The Metal Gear series is known for it’s bonus material, infact all MGS games have been available with at least some sort of bonus disc. For MGS4 there is likely to be the return of a movie previewer, bonus costumes but most importantly additional missions. MGS2 Substance had Snakes Tales, MGS3 had the monkey catching mini game and boss rush modes so it is likely that MGS4 will see a mix of these.

My selections are:

movie cinema
bonus missions
boss rush
developer interviews
and more

Conclusion

This is really the crux of what I wanted to say with this post. Ryan Payton from Konami has stated that MGS4 will be of roughly the same length if not longer than MGS3. This is why I included the ‘What is Really Going On?‘ in the header because even with all of my points included MGS4 should be less than 30gb, surely. It is almost as suspect as that suspicious drawing of Big Boss released in early artwork. Hmmmm….

I can’t help but think that Konami are once again hiding something from the gaming public. Much like MGS2, MGS4’s information stream has been carefully maintained. As always there are plenty of secrets which we simply won’t know until the game ships. So, its got me questioning the game’s massively large size. Am I the only one who doesn’t find this incredibly suspect?

Leave me a comment with your thoughts.

Star Wars in Soul Calibur 4, 16gb Pro Duo and More MGS4 News

January 11th, 2008

Theres been some fairly significant news to hit the streets of the gaming industry in the last few days. So I have sifted through and selected some articles that I wanted to share my thoughts about.

Yoda and Darth Vader in Soul Calibur IV
Source

Namco has recently announced that it will be continuing the trend of cameo characters in their Soul series. But unlike Soul Calibur II which featured (mostly) video game cameos this time Star Wars is the theme of the show. With Darth Vader (PS3) and Yoda (Xbox 360) coming in as new additions to the series.

darth vader soul calibur 4 playstation 3

Unfortunately I see this as a big oversight by Namco. Yes, playing as Star Wars in the Soul franchise is indeed awesome but why not stick to video game cameos? Because video game cameos are much more appealling to video game players than Star Wars characters, surely. Theres also a lack of justification for choosing Star Wars characters over game characters, there hasn’t been a new movie or anything to back this up. I guess we can forget about the rumour of Kratos and Master Chief as playable characters then.

16gb Memory Sitck Pro Duo
Source

Although its a little off topic, Sony have recently confirmed a new 16gb Memory Sitck Pro Duo. The Pro Duo is the stick used for the PSP as well as Vaio notebooks, Sony digital cameras and other Sony branded products.

This article grabbed my attention because this size of memory card is almost unheard of. Although it will definetly be a costly item its a real trump for the PSP mod and homebrew scene. I don’t think that I would need a card that size for the PSP and I wouldn’t use it over my 2gb compact flash card for my Sony Alpha A100 SLR (Pro Duos write too slowly and require an shell to fit inside the card slot) but its awesome in anycase.

MGS4 on the Home Stretch

2 new articles have come in from IGN about my most anticipated game of 2008; MGS4. The articles weren’t ground breaking but the following quote pricked my ears:

on CES ‘Dual Shock’ Demo

“Another thing that we noticed is that the game looks absolutely stunning. Everything is rendered in fine detail from the war-torn middle-eastern city that the level took place in, right down to the individual hairs on Snake’s ‘stache. When we asked whether or not the game will be able to run at 60 fps at 1080p, Konami said that the resolution and framerate were still being optimized and they can’t promise anything, but things were on the right track.”

This is very reassuring as I’ve been a litte worried about the game’s graphics. Obviously they look brilliant but it didn’t look like there was much variance in the colour schemes used judging by the video I’ve seen. Strangely when I look at the sceenshots it looks much more colourful than the video.

I’m not too fussed if it is run in 720p because my monitor is only fairly small so the difference between 720p and 1080p isn’t as significant than say on a 42” plasma. I would much prefer it to run at 60fps even if it was in 720p. There really shouldn’t be any games that run at 30fps anymore.

metal gear rex mgs4

See the screenshots looks vibrant

These facts suggest that MGS4 is indeed taking advantage of the Playstation 3’s to quite an extent so I guess this decreases the chance of that Xbox 360 port.

The second article summarises some more information about the release of the game. Stating that they are basically on the home stretch, that all of the content is finished and they are just squeezing out the last few bugs. More importantly though its been restated that MGS4 will launch almost simultanesous in all territories. Which is fantastic news. ^_^

Is There Any Truth in MGS4 Coming to the Xbox 360?

January 5th, 2008

metal gear solid 4 xbox 360 port

If you’ve been keeping your eye on the video game rumour mill over the past several months then its highly likely that you have heard about the constant stream of rumours about Konami planning a port of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots for the Xbox 360. This rumour has been floating around for a few months now, so I thought that it was about time I’d address it.

Is it Technically Possible?

I guess this would be the first question that we should ask ourselves. Unfortunately for us this question is difficult to answer. Not technically but rather we have no idea of the scope of MGS4. All that we have seen of the game so far is the first chapter and possibly some snippets of later in the game. As usual Konami have this one completely under wraps and the only real clue that we have is a quote from Ryan Payton saying that MGS4 is even longer than MGS3: Snake Eater.

So It looks like I’ll have to do some guess work here. Personally I can’t see MGS4 being any larger than 20GB in raw size. Which would mean that it would have to fit on two Xbox 360 DVDs. And really thats fine, games on the 360 are already 2 discs. I do think that in order to fit on the two discs or to just run on the 360 some settings will have to be toned down. It would probably mean lowering the resolution of some textures or something like that. Then again it is hard to say how much MGS4 will make use of the cell processor. But overall, from what we know now. MGS4 for the most part should run decently on the Xbox 360. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if (in typical Kojima style) MGS4 blows away our expectations and pushes the PS3 to the limits. Meaing that it could never be down ported to the Xbox 360. Argh this is so hard. ><

Would Kojima Productions want to port it over to the PS3?

For almost every rumour that gets released Kojima-san himself states otherwise. So its pretty clear that the team is not interested in releasing an Xbox 360 port.

metal gear solid 4 xbox 360 port

Although I think that all of this doesn’t matter because the fact is Konami need to sell too many copies of this game just to turn over a profit. And all of this pressure is going to be put on the North American sales because MGS is no longer a game for the Japanese (it simply doesn’t sell as well) and the PAL territory sales will make little difference overall. Now if you look at the previous sales of MGS games, namely MGS2 (because it was the most hyped) of about 7 million games in its lifetime. It becomes pretty clear that MGS4 will not achieve the magic 1 million sales on release especially with the small North American PS3 user base. So knowing this I think that Konami as a business might have stepped in and have assigned the team to work on a port after the PS3 version is completed, just to recoup production costs. Basically it all comes down to if Konami want to make a profit out of this game and chances are they will.

Once again on the flipside MGS3: Snake Eater had high production costs and still remained solely on the Playstation 2.

So What Would This Mean to Sony?

I think we all know the answer here, it means bad news. MGS4 is their ace in the hole for the hardcore user base, so no exclusive MGS4 can only be bad for Sony. And it would probably be the game in which defines the movement of developers dropping off with Sony.

Conclusion

I always use to think that an Xbox 360 port would never happen but ever since I started investigating it seems as though I just get more and more confused. So at the moment I’m not really sure what is going to happen. All I know is that come July I will be playing the best game on the Playstation 3. What about you guys, do you think that this port will take place? Will MGS4 just be a timed exclusive? Hit me up on the comments box or vote in the site poll to be heard.

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Tags: metal gear solid 4

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