Yesterday, Jonathan let you all in on the weird and not very secretly coded message plastered across a teaser site for Metal Gear Solid. The last code is mostly likely the power button for a PC–at least that is what the symbol on my power button looks like, but it also looks like the one for the Xbox 360. Then again, if you looks at the codes closely, you would also see other gaming symbols that looks very familiar to you. Therefore, one might think that the “i” is for the Wii, and the “!” is for the Xbox 360 and the last one is for the PC.  Yet, the Wii most likely would not be able to handle an exact port of Metal Gear Solid 4, therefore I personally think this had to do with the Xbox 360 and PC only.

So, if my deductive reasoning (and upon further investigation-most of the internet) is correct, MGS4 will no longer be a PS3 exclusive in the near future. That, or all the old Metal Gear Solid games will be heading to other formats–but it is best not to think on this too hard and instead focus on the obvious.

All of the speculation from yesterday is getting even more heightened today, with people chatting on all sorts of forums, but if you look back on the actual beginnings of these rumors, the teaser site just makes perfect sense.

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Remember back in June when when all those Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots bundles for the PS3 went on sale? Did you miss out on your chance to get one? Well, Walmart has your back because they are selling the Limited Edition Kojima Silver MSG4 40GB PS3 Bundles for $399.99–but you may want to check for availability before you head down to you nearest boxmart.

You can, however order one online and if you want to save $19.94 on shipping, you can have it delivered to your nearest Walmart store for pick-up. Kind of like Circuit City but without all the lies.

Now that we know these bundles are still in demand after all these months, let us hope that those of us out there who still want the 80GB model will be shown some love as well relatively soon.

(Thanks VG247)

As if the hardware numbers didn’t clue you, Metal Gear Solid 4 dominated the software charts for last month here in the United States. The game sold 774,600 units, but if you combine that number with how many Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3 bundles were sold (which include a copy of the game), the NPD estimates that about a million copies of MGS4 were sold last month. I guess people really wanted to know whether or not Snake and Otacon would have that dreamy ending they’ve been wanting since the end of the original Metal Gear Solid.

There are a few other easy-to-predict things in the top ten, such as Guitar Hero On Tour selling quite a few copies, as did Wii Fit and Wii Play. Battlefield: Bad Company (on 360) and Ninja Gaiden 2 both had strong sales, as did Mario Kart Wii.

But the major surprise — aside from GTA IV’s disappearance — is just how well Lego Indiana Jones sold. With the new movie being released, it was assured a good number of sales, but the Wii, PS2 and DS versions of the game combined for 822,600 copies sold, or in other words, straight cash money.

Kris Pigna over at 1UP made a good point regarding On Tour, suggesting that the game’s sales may have been much higher if the DS bundles were included in the figures. It’s worth keeping in mind, but I’m sure Activision is happy with selling 400k copies of a game that will likely have legs.

June 2008 Software Sales

1. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PS3) — 774,600 (Roughly 1 million including bundles)
2. Guitar Hero On Tour (DS) — 422,300
3. Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360) — 372,700
4. Wii Fit (Wii) — 372,700
5. Wii Play (Wii) – 359,100
6. Battlefield: Bad Company (Xbox 360) — 346,800
7. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) — 322,400
8. LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventure (Wii) — 294,500
9. LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventure (DS) — 267,800
10. LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventure (PS2) — 260,300

We knew about this ahead of time, but the release of the NPD figures for June make it slightly more tangible for everyone to see: Nintendo has taken the console lead in the United States, with the Wii outselling the Xbox 360 in June 666,700 units to 219,800. Now that it’s done that, I think it can be said that it’s now officially legal to punch anyone in the face that suggests the Wii is just a fad.

Sales for the PlayStation 3 were up almost 100% from May, selling a total of 405,500 units — no doubt thanks to the release of Metal Gear Solid 4. That’s almost twice the 360’s total, which is pretty impressive after only outselling the 360 by about 22,000 units in May.

Portable systems had pretty nice months, too. The PSP rebounded nicely with a solid 337,400 units, and the DS went absolutely crazy, selling 783,000. Graduation presents, perhaps?

June 2008 Hardware Sales (May numbers in parentheses)

• Nintendo DS – 783,000 (452,600)
• Wii – 666,700 (675,100)
• PlayStation 3 – 405,500 (208,700)
• PlayStation Portable – 337,4000 (182,300)
• Xbox 360 – 219,800 (186,600)
• PlayStation 2 – 188,800 (132,700)

Thanks to Kinatro over at NeoGAF, gamers now have a taste of what is in the new Game Informer before they get it in the mail – well, me anyway. I never seem to get it when everyone else does. Thanks GameStop.

Anyway – good news for Wolfenstein fans (like me) because within the confines of the pages, it has been announced that the much rumored and hardly heard of continuation of Return to Castle Wolfenstein will premiere sometime next week at E3. id Software and Raven will be at the festivities, while it may also show up at Activison’s “Screw-You-ESA” party going on around the same time.

Here are some of the facts pulled out of the August issue of GI:

• Wolfenstein (360, PS3, PC)
• Pub: Activision, Dev: Raven Software/ID Software
• Takes place in WWII against Nazi’s fully dabbling in the occult
• BJ (the hero) will also make use of supernatural powers
• Game gives you a city in which the game takes place. Missions and quests take you through different parts. As you complete quests, more of the city opens up. Kind of a non-linear path
• Set piece and randomly generated activity block your path
• There is an AI resistance force that will assist you during the game at times. Think of the resistance forces in MGS4
• You will also enter “The Shroud”, an alternate reality version of the city. A dimension in which the Nazi’s are drawing power from.

Supposedly, the screens look great, the lighting is impressive, and oh hell, it is a Wolfenstein game for crying out lout that is suppose to come out sometime this year.

Looks like between this, Fallout 3, Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Far Cry 2, and the Mines of Moria expansion for LotRO heading to stores this year, my gaming dance-card will be full.

Via: NeoGAF

I’ve been saying it for over a year now: “The day Metal Gear Solid 4 comes out is the day I buy a PS3.” So on Thursday, June 12th, that’s exactly what I did. I even drove an hour to a Wal-Mart in a small town at 6 AM to make sure I could secure the special system bundle. Being a huge fan of the series, I wanted to savor the experience, so I waited until the weekend to start playing, when I could really devote my time to the game. In the meantime, I perused reviews praising the game for its brilliant gameplay and for fixing problems that had plagued the series from the beginning. Naturally, I was even more excited to begin playing. So imagine my dissapointment when I actually popped in the disc and found it to be more movie than game.

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Thank you, Yahtzee Croshaw. I knew I could count on you to be the guy who finally played Metal Gear Solid 4, stood up, and said “What the hell?” Reviewers everywhere have been slathering praise all over the game’s redundant story and brushing aside its ridiculously long cut scenes, but not Croshaw. This has to be the most spot-on review of MGS4 I’ve seen. It is a great game to be sure — when you’re actually allowed to play it — but yes, Kojima really needs an editor.

Via The Escapist

In the days leading up to Metal Gear Solid 4’s release, the bundle featuring an 80GB PS3 along with the game was in ridiculously high demand. Websites offering pre-orders for the bundle were sold out within minutes (and in some cases, shut down entirely) and some stores held impromptu lotteries on launch day to decide who would be walking away with one of their very own. Luckily, Sony has noticed the demand and plans to ship more bundles out in early July.

“While we can’t provide specifics on inventory levels, the Metal Gear Solid 4 PlayStation 3 bundle is a limited-edition offering that’s experiencing high demand from Metal Gear and PlayStation enthusiasts,” the SCEA statement read. “We’re pleased with the strong consumer interest in the bundle and are working to ensure that additional shipments are provided to retailers.”

At this time, the 80GB bundle still seems to be one of the best deals for anyone interested in getting a PS3. Hopefully the people that missed out the first time will get a second chance at the bundle in the coming weeks.

Via GameRush

Gamers everywhere know David Hayter as the gravelly voice behind Solid Snake. But it looks like Hayter is looking to expand his role in the Metal Gear universe. Recently, he responded to fans on the IMDB message boards with this:

As for me writing the MGS movie, tell everyone on-line to write to Matt Tolmach at Sony Pictures studios in Culver City. If enough people do this, we may be back on board.

And just like that, the fans have now delivered with an online petition. To his credit, Hayter does have experience as a screenwriter, having penned the scripts for the upcoming Watchmen film and the first two X-Men movies (or as I refer to them “the good ones”). If he can keep phrase “love can bloom on the battlefield” out of it, he’s got my vote.

Via VideoGaming247

I’ve previously expressed my disdain for numbers cited as coming from VG Chartz, the videogame industry sales-tracking website, calling it “unreliable.” Given the amount of attention it’s been getting — the site has been sourced by publications like Forbes and The New York Times — Gamasutra’s Simon Carless dug into the website a bit to find out exactly how it obtains the numbers it shares. Here are a few choice excerpts from the piece, which you can read in its entirety right here.

…if they are sufficiently out, then VGChartz will retrofit their results – either weekly or monthly – to conform to the more ‘official’ data. But they won’t credit those firms as the source of the retrofitting – they’ll just bump their numbers around without saying why on the site.

…Let’s be clear. I think the concept behind VGChartz is a wonderful one – freely available data to let everyone see how well games are selling. And it’s absolutely true that all data is an estimate – not even major services such as Media Create and NPD get it exactly right.

But VGChartz is staffed by amateurs working in their spare time to estimate sales, and while they are perfectly smart, they are much closer to the SimExchange model of estimation than the Media Create method.

… [Site creator Brett] Walton freely admits the [MGS4] numbers were based on zero actual data for the entire European market, just pure extrapolation. It’s also very unclear how far the estimates for launch were based on real retail data for Japan and North America.

It’s a reasonable figure, of course, because the VGChartz folks are smart people. But it’s not a real figure. It’s a educated guesstimate, and it’s much more of an estimate than the subsequent Chart Track data for the UK, for example.

I don’t have some agenda against the site, as I’m sure someone will accuse me of, but I’ve always taken issue with numbers from the site being taken as absolute canon, or as a complete equivalent to groups such as the NPD. Walton claims that early sales numbers will be labeled accordingly, in response to Carless taking issue with the way the site marketed its MGS4 numbers. But is that really enough?