Ever since Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was released for the PSP 14 years ago, many fans have wondered why it wasn’t released as one of the number one games in the series (MGS 5): Now, Hideo Kojima, the famous director of the series, explained that they made this decision due to ‘overseas marketing’.
Hideo Kojima: It was a PR decision!
“After creating MGS4, I strongly felt the need for a dedicated game engine,” Kojima said in a new post. At the time, Kojima believed that a new engine would be the only way to make a big leap forward in the gaming world, so he asked for the Fox Engine to be developed.
Fox Engine would later power games like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. However, Kojima stated that he wanted to take the series in a different direction and spread it to other platforms.
Stating that Peace Walker was originally called Metal Gear Solid 5: Peace Walker, Kojima said, “However, we faced strong opposition from the overseas marketing team, so we dropped the numbered title of the game.”
Developed for the PSP platform, the game has also lowered its target audience to a younger age group, middle and high school students. He stated that with this move, they aim to gain young fans and enable families to play this game with their children.
It was known that Peace Walker was being developed under the name Metal Gear Solid 5 for a while, but the exact reasons behind this name change have not been fully explained until today. Kojima himself described Peace Walker as “an MGS5-level game”. However, fans have long speculated that Konami didn’t want to market a portable game as a numbered title in the main series.
This latest revelation pulls back the curtain on the deep history of the series and clarifies why Peace Walker remains an unnumbered game and not a mainstream title in the series.
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