PS3 Exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4 Was 'Running Beautifully and Smoothly' on the Xbox 360 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 July 2023 / 6,471 Views
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots assistant producer Ryan Payton speaking on Steven L. Kents book, called The Ultimate History of Video Games Volume 2, revealed the developer had gotten the game running on the Xbox 360.
"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," Payton said via Time Extension.
"They believed MGS4 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. As one of the few unabashed Xbox fans in the office, I was excited."
Payton said that despite Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots running on the Xbox 360 the reason it did not release on the console is due to the physical copy requiring multiple discs.
Konami last month finally announced the long rumored remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater called Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. The remake is in development for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Please get this game playable on modern hardware it's ridiculous thats its trapped on the ps3
PS3 emulation exists. The problem is more obtaining the game in a legal manner than a technological platform trap.
PS3 emulation isn't anywhere nearly as robust as Xbox 360 emulation, though. Last I knew there are some still PS3 games that no emulator does well.
Luckily it's not about "some games" but MGS4 in particular being in a "PS3 trap" and according to the RPCS3 Wiki MGS4 is playable with a patch and some emulator tweaks. It does not appear to be so bad.
But it is not, it is one of the games that is the least playable actually. It crashes very often even worth the patch and there are a lot of different graphic pal problem even with a top a of the line PC.
But but but... the power of the cell? :D
Seriously tho, this sucks so much because emulating it is still not perfect; This is a amazing game and there is no way to play it properly today other than having a Play Station 3. I have it in my Play Station library (digital); it shows up in my library in the Play Station 5 but I have no way to play it other than having an old Play Station 3. (and it is not part of the list of Play Station 3 games you can play with the cloud either)
That's one game I hope they will come with a remaster at some point.
MGSIV was available to play through the cloud for years on PS Now. It seemed to be removed a year ago just about the time of the PS Plus re-launch.
You are absolutely right, this is actually when I bought it digitally :D I was playing it using the cloud cause I sold my Play Station 3. Kinda sucked for me when this option went away with the introduction of the Plus stuff. Hopefully, it will come back at some point or a remaster/remake.
I also started playing it through the cloud. I was pissed when it was removed. Luckily I had a used disc copy that I could play on my PS3, which I kept in the basement. I would have preferred to stream it in my main gaming room on my PS4 though.... This game needs a port/remake the most!
Random memory: this game boasted about the blu-ray being able to fit the whole game in one disc thus did not need a disc swap. Of course, no mention of the several minutes (15 whole minutes!) this game required for installation. In comparison, swapping out a disc takes mere seconds.
Oh boy.
Yep, multiple discs back in the day was a terrible idea.
Yet FF7-2 uses multiple disks today..
And it's a bad idea today when you can just download the rest of the game from the cloud. Discs are going away, and good riddance. The PC scene wasn't hurt by the end of physical media and the need to enter CD keys.
Gotta disagree with you. Why not have both? If you don't care about discs just buy it digitally and download it that way. But if you buy the disc, all the content needed to start the game without an internet connection should be there and if one disc isn't enough, have two discs. (with the exception of a multiplayer-only game obviously) Physical games all the way I say!
In the early 2000s when all the content was on the disks. Modern gaming isnt that anymore.
Some games still work from the disc and without an internet connection. That's my point.
Thats Rare. Plus you would always want to download the day one patch anyway.
There's a larger environmental footprint to discs.
While some games are installable from the disc without an internet connection as you say, the overwhelming majority of games (all platforms added together) do not work until you download one or more patches. And, let's be honest, most games ship in a terrible state and you wouldn't want to play it without all the updates.
Having to swap discs opens up the potential to damage/lose/misfile discs, and limits where the machine can be situated (my main console is behind the TV).
We don't agree that discs have a larger environmental footprint?
We don't agree that most games these days, after being first installed off the disc, won't work without an internet connection and one (or more) patches?
I believe both of the above are object fact.
We don't agree that most games ship in a terrible state, and that reliability and performance improves over time as patches are deployed? Digital Foundry's testing suggests to me that's objective fact.
We don't agree that having to swap discs opens at the potential for damaging/losing/misfiling discs? Even if you're very careful, surely it's objective fact that it at least opens up the potential for that? The potential for that is all I was asserting.
We don't agree that needing to access the console to swap discs limits where the console can be situated? That's objective fact too.
Fair enough that you like discs and I like digital distribution. But we can't agree to disagree until you actually assert what point you disagree with me on. :)
But ff13 was multiple discs on 360
Different Dev who made a different choice
Looks like that was around 18 gigs, Metal gear solid comes in at around 26 gigs.
So probably 5 disks.
But that also comes down to how disk space is used. Apparently SE did a lot of compression for the Xbox 360 as opposed to the ps3.
"Final Fantasy 13 originally ran at a somewhat disappointing 1024x576 on Xbox 360 with 2x MSAA"
Because it was lower resolution than PS3 version and still had to use 3 DVD's.
The Xbox 360 version was simply nerfed, they used a terrible video compression codec based around mpeg... They would have gotten better results with H. 264 which would have brought forth, smaller file sizes and higher quality.
The internal in-game rendered resolution had no impact on disc usage, poor optimization as the Xbox 360 can definitely hold it's own on this front.
Definitely.
The video in FF13 was shit quality on the Xbox 360 even when compared against other games, it definitely doesn't hold up today.
However, on Xbox One X/Series X backwards compat, the game runs at 3072x1728 and it looks crisp... Thanks to also keeping the 2x MSAA.
Microsoft -did- replace the crappy lossy mpeg2 video with 720P in the backwards compat version, still a step down from the PS3 blu-ray release though.
The developers definitely made some bizarre and incorrect choices in the development of the Xbox 360 release.
So Redfall caused an uproar because it was taken off PS, whats the excuse here? Dont give me that multiple disk excuse.
They still choose not to sell it digitally to this day.
That's bull. It was always a playstationm exclusive.
Oh the irony.
I'm not sure about two discs was the only issue of this game :)
I think it is more like Sony deal.
I do think it is very unlikely that they made the whole game run in X360 and decided not to just because of multiple discs (we had final fantasy with 4 discs and some other PC games with even more). Perhaps the game couldn't be run without installing a lot of that data on the console because there was no clear cut possibility of separating the game on the discs or they made just a small portion run as a test of concept. Otherwise they wouldn't just toss out the development cost imho.
