A new unexpected delay has been announced for the PS3 today. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is one of the very few exclusives this system will boast and now it's release date has been pushed off until the second quarter of 2008. The PS3 has been notoriously hard to program games for and this has caused untold headaches for developers making cross platform titles. Most notable was the Madden 08' fiasco where the frame rate on the X-box 360 was twice as high as on the PS3 due to these programming speed bumps. Metal Gear however is a PS3 only title and not just any, it is the headlining title for the system. No single PS3 game has been more highly anticipated except maybe a new Final Fantasy which doesn't even have a theoretical release date yet!

Here is the quote from the people over in the Metal Gear camp regarding this delay. "Konami had initially intended to release Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots this winter and has been working on the production of the title. Konami has decided to delay the title's release in order to make further improvements to the quality of the game and provide even greater enjoyment for more customers worldwide."

This is one reason never to trust games with purely cinematic trailers like what has been released for Metal Gear so far. Sure, they can have the PS3 render some sweet movie cut scenes, but how far along is the actual game? The 15-20 minute long trailers for Metal Gear have been impressive, but everyone has access to them on sites like Voig. The actual gameplay is the only thing that PS3 owners get for their money and if the developers invested that much into the cinematics early on in the development process how do they justify these new delays in actually finishing the game?