Why Metal Gear Solid 4 must succeed

It may seem a hollow statement on the surface considering early reviews are falling over themselves to praise the brilliance of Kojima and Konami but Metal Gear Solid 4 is about to make a bold statement, whether it knows it or not.
This is not about "saving" the PlayStation brand with the triple A, killer app title that the PS3 so desperately needs, this is going to be a statement about gaming. This isn't even going to be about fresh ideas in gaming because, despite MGS4's new innovations, it is merely building on a winning formula set out by it's predessors.

This, is about preserving the hardcore gaming market. Ever since the Wii and DS consoles have burst onto the scene, the casual gaming market has boomed. Wii Fit, Wii Sports and Brain Training are just a few names you can throw down of casual games and, don't get me wrong, they're great.

However, game developers have been long instilled with the bad habit of seeing a great unique idea and coping it, usually badly, and beating to death. Two easy examples are Resident Evil 4 and Grand Theft Auto 3. Honestly, how many more over-the-shoulder view games are we going to see? As for GTA, well, let's just say that there will be more clones to come.

Now, taking this into consideration, we need to look at the impact of the casual game. The brilliant Nintendogs has spawned.... Dogz (yes, there IS a "Z" there), Buzz gave birth to Chegger's Party Quiz (how did they think of that?) and, of course, Wii Sports gave way to Brunswick Pro Bowling. Not exactly stellar spawning compared to Resident Evil 4 begating Gears of War and Grand Theft Auto begating almost everything that has a sandbox environment.

Of course there have been some bad clones of hardcore games and some good clones of casual games but there is a balancing act in place between the two markets and either must tipped the other off the edge.

Things seem to be levelling out, post Wii fallout, with a great, and I mean GRRREAT, summer of proper, hardcore games we've had. GTAIV leads the pack comfortably with Mario Kart Wii nipping at it's heels and with as more to look forward to with Metal Gear in 10 days and Smash Bros at the end of the month.

It's these games that need to keep the balance going on the sales charts because, if they don't, people will stop making these brilliant, high production games and end up with poor looking, poor playing games which last for mere hours and have a difficulty curve that looks like a flat line.

HTG Out