LogInFormer Kojima Productions employee revealed that Metal Gear Solid 4 didn't have to be a PS3 exclusive, although Hideo Kojima had his own reasons for not porting the game to Xbox 360.
It turns out that Kojima Productions' Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots released in 2008 for PlayStation 3 didn't have to be a PlayStation exclusive, a former studio's employee Ryan Payton revealed in The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 2 book.
The game developer noted that Hideo Kojima's team didn't have an agreement with Sony on the exclusivity of MGS4 for the PlayStation console. The company did invest in the production of the game, although Payton claims that if the creators had decided to release the stealth game on the Xbox 360, the company would have approved it without any problems.
"The prevailing belief around the industry was that Sony must have secured an exclusive deal for the game. It wasn't true, Payton said (via ResetEra). "Had Kojima chosen to port the game to Xbox 360, his bosses would surely have approved the decision, but he wasn't ready to make the jump."
ResetEra user Rhaast also recalled the 2013's radio show where Hideo Kojima explained that the game never made it to the Xbox 360 as the platform's hardware was simply not designed for such a game.
"I'm sorry to say an Xbox 360 version isn't being released, because an Xbox 360 version of MGS4 hasn't gone on sale," Kojima said at the time. "To explain the situation, the amount of data in MGS4 is just too enormous."
Kojima noted that PS3 used Blu-ray, while the Xbox 360 used DVD which means that if Konami were to release the game on the Xbox 360, it would take up to seven DVDs. It is worth noting that MGS4 takes up about 30 GB which was quite a lot for the time when the game was released.
Currently, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots cannot be purchased from the Sony digital store due to licensing issues. However, Konami is said to be looking into renewing the licenses, so hopefully, we will see the game in the updated PlayStation Plus subscription which is set to be out in June.
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