Metal Gear Solid 4 did not come to Xbox due to its lack of Blu-Ray disc support

The Metal Gear Solid franchise has historically been associated with PlayStation. That said, support for Xbox finally arrived with the release of MGSV. Interestingly, it has now been confirmed that an Xbox 360 version of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was in development – but did not see completion due to the console’s lack of Blu-Ray support.

As first reported by the publication ‘Time Extension’ the recently released book ‘The Ultimate History of Video Games Vol 2’ included an interview from Metal Gear Solid 4’s assistant producer ‘Ryan Payton’ who revealed that the game was originally being developed for both PS3 as well as the Xbox 360, saying:

“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.”

Unfortunately, an Xbox version of MGS4 never came to be due to the console’s lack of Blu-Ray disc support. On PS3, the game was released on a double-layer Blu-Ray disc – the first video game to do so. This was due to MGS 4’s large file size, which took up over 50GB of space. Had MGS4 ended up coming to Xbox it would have required at least 3 discs (or up to 11 if they had used single-layer DVDs). 

Games coming on multiple discs has been a practice going back as early as the 1990s. That said, it does make some sense that MGS4 did not end up coming to Xbox given just how many discs it would have required. It would be interesting to see how different the franchise would have been had the game come to Xbox.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of MGS4? Would you have installed 11 discs to play the game on Xbox? How big of a deal was the 360’s lack of a Blu-Ray player for you at the time? Let us know down below.

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