Remaking Metal Gear Solid 4 might be tough, Konami says the game used 'unique code'

Konami might have a difficult time remaking Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots because the game uses 'unique and special code' on the PlayStation 3.

Remaking Metal Gear Solid 4 might be tough, Konami says the game used 'unique code'
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Senior Gaming Editor
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2-minute read time
TL;DR: Metal Gear Solid 4 remains exclusive to PS3 due to its complex, unorthodox code designed for the PS3's Cell processor, making a remake or port challenging. Konami's costly development environment and hardware constraints hinder a remake, leaving MGS4's wider release uncertain despite Metal Gear's recent resurgence.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is currently stuck on the PS3, and a big reason why it has never departed the platform may lie in the game's complex code.

Remaking Metal Gear Solid 4 might be tough, Konami says the game used 'unique code' 45
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Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater has been a big success for Konami, selling 1 million copies on launch day. But what about other remakes? Fans have wanted a MGS4: Guns of the Patriots remake for over a decade now. The next best thing would be to port MGS4 over to other platforms and finally let Xbox and PC players try out the game.

Will Konami do it? The question might come down to how difficult it'll be to pull off, and from the sound of it, Konami had to implement some pretty unorthodox code in order to leverage the PS3's built-in Cell processor. This chip was a big reason why the PS3 failed to gain strong momentum, as devs had a hard time getting their games to play nicely with the PS3's complicated architecture.

In a recent interview with Japanese publication Real Sound, Metal Gear producer Noriaki Okamura says a remake of Metal Gear Solid 4 might be a tall order for Konami.

"The hardware at the time required some pretty special construction to deliver 3D performance with the technology available at the time, and MGS4 also had some pretty special code... It would be pretty hard to do it now," Okamura said before laughing, as translated by machine learning, and backed up by a translation from Genki_JPN.

It's interesting to note that Konami's premiere choice for the remake, Snake Eater, was built for the PlayStation 2 system. That being said, Konami did have to remake a ton of assets and models for the modern release of MGS Delta Snake Eater.

Based on Konami's current position on the market, which sees Metal Gear slowly coming back into the mainstream with re-releases, it's unclear whether or not the company is ready to spend more than it did on Snake Eater in order to get another remake on the market. From the sound of it, and the current industry costs, a remake of Guns of the Patriots might end up costing more than Snake Eater due to the former's complexity and different development environment.

If anything, we might see MGS4 show up again via the second Metal Gear Solid Vol 2 collection.