As if two new Metal Gear titles at E3 weren’t enough, Sony’s now bringing the undisputed champ of the Metal Gear Series to PlayStation Network. Starting today, you can grab the PS1 classic, Metal Gear Solid, for $9.99. You can even get it for your PSP!

As usual, there’s a lot of other stuff in the update. Some of it is interesting, like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter for the PSP. Some of it is mindless, like Qore (Seriously, does anyone actually watch that?).

You can also choose the demo for EA Sports’ NCAA Football 10, as well as the usual weekly song downloads for Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Rock Band gets Spinal Tap this week, something guaranteed to make people my age smile with nostalgia.

If you want to see a full list of what’s available this week, it’s available after the break.

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Put on your Octo-cam suit and revisit Shadow Moses as Old Snake on Metal Gear Online. The new map Icebound Inferno is adapted directly from the original Metal Gear Solid Shadow Moses map. The new content for the free PS3 exclusive multiplayer game that came with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is available with the SCENE expansion pack at the MGO in-game store and Konami’s online store. Get more details on the new content from Konami’s press release following the break.
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Hideo Kojima made an appearance at Sony’s press conference to introduce a big Metal Gear Solid game for its new pocket size portable. The new PSP Go has Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker in the works. This full Solid Snake game takes place in 1974, ten years after MGS3 making it a true successor.

With E3 2009 in full swing Gaming Today is swimming in trailers for so many awesome games, you’ll forget how slow the first five months of 2009 were. I’ll try to fire off as many as I can in short bursts. Enjoy the Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker E3 trailer after the break.
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As Ron pointed out the other day, a new splash screen over at Kojima Productions’ website featured a grassy field with distant lightning pulsing every once in a while to briefly reveal an image of a ‘5′ or ‘S’.

That countdown has ended, and we are now being teased with yet another countdown. As of this writing, the new countdown reads 102 hours remaining (just over 4 days).

Additionally, a random sequence of four flashing digits or letters are now being pulsed in the same fashion as before. My crude transcription skills read them out to be (in no particular order): ‘E3e5′

While this doesn’t exactly help clarify things, it sure does add fuel to the already blazing speculation fire. The letters ‘E3′ would obviously mean reference to the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo taking place June 2nd through the 4th.

So what do the other two letters mean? The first thing that came in my mind was ‘Se’ = ‘Snake Eater’. A port? A sequel to the prequel? A prequel to the prequel? Argh!

Or could it just simply mean ‘e5′ = ‘episode 5′? Double Argh!

Damn you, Kojima! *shakes fist* Damn youuuu!

Expect more countdowns, teasing, and overall sneakiness until our collective heads explode.

Over at the Konami website, there’s a shiny new countdown page (seen in the screenshot above). There’s no word on exactly what it’s a teaser for just yet, but if you visit the site, you’ll see it’s located in the Kojima Productions directory of the Konami site.

Each time the lightning flashes in the Flash driven countdown page, it reveals the outline of the number five. Whether this refers to Metal Gear Solid 5, or some other title, we’ll just have to wait and see. Maybe E3 will bring all the answers we seek.

Let’s just hope that if it is MGS5, it’s not featuring Raiden. I just don’t think I could take that.

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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This has got to be one of the most inventive ads for a video game I’ve seen in awhile. At first, I thought this was simply one helluva fan creation, but it turns out to actually be an ad for Metal Gear Ac!d Mobile. It’s kind of strange that they don’t show any actual gameplay footage here, but watching little fingers kill each other is entertaining all by itself. Finally we get an answer to the age-old question: “Can thumb wrestling bloom on the battlefield?”

We all know that the 20GB Xbox 360’s price drop is just artificial — once those units sell through, it’ll be gone, and we’ll be back to the three current price points for the Arcade, Premium and Elite SKUs.

Todd Greenwald, an analyst with Signal Hill, has told investors that the “Xbox 360 needs a real price cut.” This temporary cut isn’t enough to stave off the fierce competition from the Wii and PlayStation 3.

“We remain very sceptical of Microsoft’s pricing strategy and competitive positioning versus the PlayStation 3.

“At USD 349, with a 60GB hard drive, we just don’t think it is a compelling product compared with the PS3 at USD 399 with an 80GB hard drive (along with more processing horsepower, Blu-ray, Wifi, HDMI, and going forward, more exclusive content),” Greenwald said.

“We’d also note that the Xbox 360 has just been surpassed by the Wii in the US, despite Microsoft’s one year head start over Nintendo.

“We do think that the Netflix announcement is a significant addition for Xbox users, though its far more of a positive for Netflix than it is for Microsoft in our opinion,” he said of one of the new features in the ‘new Xbox experience.’

“Sony’s biggest announcement was a strong counter-punch to Microsoft’s USD 50 price cut on the 360.

“We think this should give Sony a leg up versus the 360, along with several exclusive titles like the just-released Metal Gear Solid, LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, Killzone 2, Gran Turismo 5, God of War 3, etc.

“Beyond Gears of War 2, Microsoft doesn’t seem to have the same library of exclusive, must-have titles,” he concluded.

Greenwald makes a good point. If Microsoft could drop the price across the board and get the system under or equal to the price of the Wii at $250, it would be an extremely helpful selling point going into this holiday season.

via GamesIndustry.biz

The File-N-Forget Podcast returns this week as we ramp up for our upcoming E3 coverage. With Metal Gear Solid 4 now established in the market and fans going gaga over it, Ron and Shawn give their quick impressions of it along with Battlefield: Bad Company and Alone in the Dark.

Bigger questions loom however as we discuss the state of E3 and what we think might happen in years to come.

There are also Rants & Raves to make the fanboys happy.

This weeks show is available by direct download here.

As always, you can get past episodes from our podcast page at http://podcast.filefront.com, and you can send your comments, questions, suggestions, or snarky comments to podcast@filefront.com.

File-N-Forget is also available on the iTunes Music Store.

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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