Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain: Devs Crunched For PC Release Parity With Consoles

Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain for PC went through some drama in the months prior to release. Now, we learned that is isn’t quite all over.

Back in March, Konami announced that the game would be held back two weeks for PC, without much explanation. More recently, they rescinded this and gave all platforms the same release date. However, Metal Gear Online has been delayed, and PC once again gets held back to January 2016 versus October 6 2015 for other platforms.

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PC launch day earlier than original plan. Our programmers didn't take summer vacation to make it happen.. kinda sad https://t.co/FSLDE7KrMR

— Ken-ichiro Imaizumi (@Ken1555) August 30, 2015

Even it was hard to make launch earlier they enjoyed to make look better. Obviously their families are not happy 🙁 https://t.co/yMth0XOdht

— Ken-ichiro Imaizumi (@Ken1555) August 30, 2015

Now, we learned that Konami staff did much more to make this possible than we realized. One of the producers, Konami veteran Kenichiro Imaizumi, revealed that the PC version is launching earlier than planned. The programmers had to give up their summer vacation and crunch to get there in time. Imaizumi claims the devs ultimately enjoyed doing so, but their families weren’t happy. Given what we know about working for Konami, they may not have had much choice when management decided.

Contents on disc for the physical retail PC version of #MGSVTPP: – Steam installer (8.78 MB) And… nothing else. pic.twitter.com/TcFskpSZ8O

— graphμre | グラフ (@graphure) August 30, 2015

Konami’s decision seems contradictory, given how they’re handling the PC release. As this fan attests, buying the PC version gets you nothing but the 8.78 MB installer and nothing else. This, of course, you will inevitably end up going to the Steam page, where you will find that Konami did not enable preloading. This was something they did announce earlier, but that hardly makes things better. It all amounts to a rushed port that won’t have true release parity anyway.

Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain is now scheduled to release simultaneously for Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on September 1.