No, not because Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is taking forever to be released. 2007 is the 20 year anniversary of the Metal Gear games, and Konami plans on re-releasing these games from its past:

• Metal Gear Solid (PlayStation, 1500 yen, $12.35)
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (PlayStation 2, 1800 yen, $14.82)
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, (PlayStation 2, 2800 yen, $23.05)
• Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, (PSP, 2800 yen $23.05)

Konami will also release a Metal Gear Solid Collection bundle package that contains all four of the games above, for the price of 6900 yen ($56.80). Their new release dates will be July 26th, although for now Konami is only offering the re-releases to Japan.

Four months ago I confirmed this unbelievably obvious news: Square Enix probably won't have Final Fantasy XIII ready for a release before the end of this year. It was friggin' January then, and we all knew it already, but apparently there's still a lot of gamers who can't cope with this possibility:

"In fact, Wada says investors shouldn't expect the epic RPG until after their coming fiscal year, which means no Final Fantasy XIII in Japan until at least May 2008. North America will probably receive the game sometime in the fall of 2008."

There's no Square Enix enigma to unravel, they've got a lot of projects right now and Final Fantasy XIII is easily the most anticipated one of them all. And while we're on the topic of PlayStation 3 games people really want, Metal Gear Solid 4 is likely to not come out until March next year, so you can stop hoping for that game soon as well. It's called waiting, Nintendo gamers can tell you all about it.

It'll still be a while until Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is out for PlayStation 3, but he's already talking about another game idea he'd like to do. It doesn't sound like he's serious about making this game, but the gameplay idea is definitely as weird as it is creative. It's an online zombie game where you pay to play, except you're really paying to not play your character, you're paying to save them from zombie doom. Here's how it works:

"The zombie idea I have is a bit different. Imagine a large town where half the inhabitants are zombies. Users would subscribe, get inside the town and get bitten. At that stage they become undead and can't control their character - all they can do is modify the camera angles... They'd see their character attacking humans and have to pay just to watch! The only way they could end it is by opening another account, hunting themselves down and killing themselves. Of course, the problem is that your second character can get bitten as well."

Reminds me of those dropped call cell phone commercials - if you cut that quote in half you'd have the worst game idea ever, but adding the alternate accounts to save your original character is something I haven't seen or heard of before. I hate any zombie movies, games, etc that take themselves seriously (pretty much every zombie movie and game ever except for Shaun of the Dead and Dead Rising), but I'd pay to give this game a try. Hopefully this game goes further than just a conceptual phase, I'd like to see how they'd handle the environments to keep the game fresh for more than a day or two of gameplay.

On a related note - something I've been wanting to see for a while now is a gaming TV station that pulls a Truman Show on various professional players' accounts. I know paying to watch people play games sounds incredibly lame, but several times throughout the week when I'm on the computer I put on some random DVD and just listen to it for a few hours while I'm working on stuff. I'd love to be able to watch and listen to the best World of Warcraft players live as they go on raids. I've heard that in Korea there's a StarCraft channel that does, or did exist once. I really wish someone would do this in America for a few games. Imagine your Wii channels filled with rows of live video feeds from awesome players, and you can tag along with any of them for the ride. I can see TV adopting this approach to gaming eventually, but not any time soon sadly. Would you pay for a service like this? Or is it as retarded sounding as mircotransactions and the rest of the money making schemes?

GamePro got the opportunity to talk to the Hideo Kojima at great length about his upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots game. He doesn't reveal anything new, but does hint and allude to several interesting things. He starts off by covering the settings, which does start in the Middle East, and is influenced by current events, but he stresses that it's a global game full of traveling from one country to another - more like an "espionage on the battlefield" World War III game. The enemies should act according to their surrounding atmosphere - when things are calm they might just hide and fight back, but when already panicked they'll run away in fear. Snake himself has been aged and is not as bright as he was in previous games, but Hideo didn't want to put the stress on the players, and mentions that Snake wears a muscle suit to keep up to his old ways. 

Kojima won't say whether the game is linear or non-linear, but he does mention some interesting things about weapons and countries. He won't say whether or not mechs will show up, but he says there's more gun modification than ever before, and won't say how the player received the special guns. He does say that gameplay will let you take sides with a country of your choosing and pick which other country to target, allowing for backstabbing. The better your side does the further you can go faster through the game. He makes it seem like weapons will pave the course of the game from one country to another, so it wouldn't be surprising if the "Guns of the Patriots" game revolves around corrupt arms deals between nations.

He also mentioned that making it for the PS3 was difficult, but said PS2 wasn't easy either. Along with that, he said he wants rumble feature back, and actually isn't excited about 1080p gaming. After MGS4 he plans to not only get involved with the Wii and possibly Xbox 360, but also PC gaming. His game team isn't a big fan of going down the path but he mentions the desire for making a worldwide game.

It'll still be a while before the game comes out this year, so for more reading on Metal Gear Solid 4, you can read the full GamePro interview here.

Another rumor tumor has spread across the net, and boy has it stirred up some heated fanboyism. NOOOZ is reporting that Konami is afraid that there won't be enough PS3s out by the time there game releases because of "the blu ray diode failure issues." NOOOZ is saying that it will get official confirmation in the next week from Konami. Supposedly this is the site that first reported that Assassin's Creed would lose its PS3 exclusivity, but this still looks like a big fat lie. If it's true though, it might be the biggest bitch fest the Internet has ever seen from fanboys. Time to find out who makes Prozac and how much their stock shares cost.

Update: Konami has made an announcement and killed 360 owners' dreams. Kutaragi can take the oxygen mask off now:

"Konami has no plans to bring Metal Gear Solid 4 to the Xbox 360 at this time," a Konami representative told CVG, reiterating that the Hideo Kojima stealth-em-up was still "exclusive to PlayStation 3."