Metal Gear Solid mastermind Hideo Kojima has hinted that it may be some time before gamers get their hands on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. In an interview with Japanese publication Famitsu, Kojima declared that the title “will require much more development time” and that he would like the PlayStation 4 to become “more spread out” before the game is released.
Originally, Kojima wanted to launch both The Phantom Pain and the upcoming prologue, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes at the same time. However, due to the PlayStation 4 not being as available as they would have wanted it to be, Fox Team came up with a compromise.
The famed creator described it as such:
“That means we would’ve had to make people wait a while longer. [MGS V] The Phantom Pain has enormous volume, so it will require much more time. So, together with the marketing staff, we consulted ‘what ifs’ and such, and came to the decision of allowing fans to at least play the prologue, ahead of time.”
So that’s how we ended up with being able to play Ground Zeroes sometime in Spring 2014. The prologue will be coming to the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 for a cost of $29.99 on next-gen consoles and $19.99 on current-gen consoles. Kojima also added that Konami flirted with the idea of making the title download only, but after realizing that “some places don’t have the best connectivity,” the company decided to release a physical edition as well.
In addition, Kojima revealed that playing Ground Zeroes will reward games who purchase The Phantom Pain with an unknown in-game item.
With the rate that Metal Gear Solid titles tend to come out, this news is not exactly surprising. I’m going to assume that most gamers figured that The Phantom Pain was still quite far off in the first place, but at least Kojima has confirmed our suspicions. For now, we will just have to make do with Ground Zeroes I suppose, which I’m certainly not complaining about that.
We will continue to have coverage of both Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes in the coming months.
Tell us, does news of the title’s long development time shock any of you? Let us know in the comments section below.