MGS4 had a bigger budget, considering the length of development and number of staff employed by Kojima Productions (about 200) dedicated to one game.
If you watch the production videos, you'll see the team took quite a few indulgences in the production of the game in the interest of realism/making the best product possible.
- on site field trips to Eastern Europe to assist in the creation of the setting for Act 3
- hiring a military consultant and having game development staff go through a tactical training "boot camp" including small arms weapons handling and small unit tactics
- on site field trips to military installations to view current equipment and hardware systems in use, etc.
Not exactly necessary to make a convincing game, but it probably made the development process more interesting for studio employees, with the side effect of expanding the overall budget.
It all depends on how a studio allocates its funds during production. In most cases, developing the way Kojima Productions did for MGS4 just doesn't make financial sense.
In most cases, games can be made profitable with a lot less effort and far fewer resources if the management in charge of production keeps schedules and expenditures on time and within budget. Typically cheaper and shorter than games like MGS4.
Just take a look at studios like Insomniac by comparison.
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