Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was the first Metal Gear game to break from the series’ patented stealth central, weird-squat-crouching gameplay, and instead opted for a more action orientated play-style focused primarily on sword play. Despite apparently being named by a nine year old, Revengeance was well received critically and has performed more than admirably on the sales charts. But why the nuts was the game not released on the Xbox 360 in Japan?
According to Yuji Korekado, lead producer at Kojima Productions, a 360 version was in the pipeline for Japan but due to the dwindling sales of the console the release was scrapped. “Around last year, Xbox 360 sales didn’t really grow [in Japan],” said Korekado on the HideoBlog podcast.
The projected sales for Revengeance (everybody knows that’s not a real word) on the 360 were dismal when compared to prospective Ps3 sales in Japan and especially Xbox sales outside of Japan. “‘Bwah?’ I thought [after seeing the projected figures],” said Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima during the podcast. “And if we did release that [number in Japan], there was talk that it would be rough on the brand.”
Bwah indeed, Mr Kojima. Microsoft’s red ringer has never performed as well as expected in the land of the rising sun and it looks like Japanese 360 owners will be punished for their nation’s disloyalty, seeing fewer Japanese versions of 360 games from now on. Earlier in the month Kojima announced that the Metal Gear Solid: Legacy Collection (pretty much all the Metal Gears in one box) would not release to Xbox 360 consoles due to the large data size of Metal Gear 4.
However, not wanting to give the proverbial middle finger to its Japanese fan base, the studio included Japanese subtitles on the western version of the game, allowing players to import from overseas. Which is a nice gesture but kinda like buying your friend a delicious breakfast sandwich and then leaving it on another continent.
Kojima briefly mentioned in the same podcast that he had plans for a PC version of Revengeance.