MGS4 Producer Wants Million Sales, Day One

Konami’s Ryan Payton may have gone insane – the Tokyo-based assistant producer on what is looking like one of the PS3’s biggest exclusives in 2008, Metal Gear Solid 4, has gone on record stating that the game needs to sell a million copies ON DAY ONE to start recouping its whopping great dev costs.

Has Ryan had some dodgy sushi that’s made his brain go all wrong? Or is his prediction anywhere near a real possibility?

Payton told Reuters, "We're telling our fans that if you want to play Metal Gear Solid 4, you have to buy a PS3...The PlayStation brand has always been good to us, and we're pretty bullish on the PS3."

Halo 3 offers Konami a bit of hope, with over a million gamers having gone online for a bit of multiplayer action in the first 20 hours of the game's release. With a substantially smaller installed base for the PS3, however, MGS4 might struggle to repeat the trick.

Meanwhile, Sony Computer Entertainment America's senior VP of marketing, Peter Dille, plays down the importance of the third-party exclusive to the long-term success of PlayStation 3.

"We understand publishers are needing to recoup their investment", he said. "From our perspective, as long as the games aren't going exclusive to other platforms, PS3 gamers are not actually losing anything."

Is Dille correct? Let us know in the Forum.

^{Source: Reuters}