When it comes to video games, there are a few things that many people understand. And one of the biggest things is that there are certain franchises (also known as IPs) that are going to be rooted to one console. These are “console exclusives” and they’re one of the main backbones of the console wars. Why is that? Because each system wants to have that “killer app” that’ll bring people to their platform and potentially play most of their games on it. And this brings us to Metal Gear Solid 4.
The Metal Gear franchise as a whole has bounced around a bit over its lifetime. The original titles were on Nintendo systems believe it or not, but then, when Hideo Kojima took over, they went to the PlayStation and instantly made a splash on the PS1 and PS2. By the time Metal Gear Solid 4 was getting ready for launch (after multiple delays), it made sense that the game would only be out on the PS3, as it was almost tradition at the time.
But that’s where the twist comes in. Because according to The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 2, there was never a rule or restriction putting MGS4 solely on the PS3. In fact, Konami (who later had a MAJOR falling out with Kojima) was noted to be willing to port the game to the Xbox 360 if the team was up for it.
The deciding factor here was ironically Hideo Kojima himself, who was noted to not want to work on a port for the game.
So thus…it never happened.
Considering that this was one of the “ends” for the mainline story, it makes sense that Kojima just wanted to make the game the best he could on one system and not have to divide time to making it work on multiple systems. Sure enough, MGS4 was a major success on the PS3…and only there.