Kojima: "PS3 is a monster machine"

The Metal Gear Solid creator reveals how he and his development studio got a head start on PS3 development.

In a recent interview with the BBC's Click program, Hideo Kojima, creator of the acclaimed Metal Gear franchise, has revealed that the first few years of development on MGS4 were "trial and error".

"We started to work on Metal Gear Solid 4 four years ago, after finishing Metal Gear Solid 3," said Kojima-san. "At that time we really didn't know what the PS3 was going to be like, so the first two years was all about experimenting, developing and trial and error."

"In the last two years, we've known what the PS3 is capable of, the specifications of it and how we can utilise it," he continued. "PS3 is a monster machine. That's why it took so much time to create Metal Gear Solid 4."

Kojima-san also acknowledged the early access to the PS3 that Sony allowed them because of the importance of the Metal Gear Solid series for the PlayStation brand.

"Since we're developing only for the Sony format, of course Sony has given us a lot of advantage before the actual release of the hardware," he said. "So we had many meetings with them to discuss the specifications. We analysed this black box quite a lot before it was released, and we experimented with it and we gave Sony a lot of feedback."

Metal Gear Solid 4 is currently a PlayStation 3 exclusive, but the recent announcement that Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the Xbox 360 has ignited rumours that it won't be long until MGS4 is also available for the PS3's rival platform.