I don't really know about this too much but... Why does stuff have to be again and again on each level? How does it help slow reading? AFAIK on Blu-ray it doesn't matter where the information is stored; the reading speed is a constant everywhere on the disc, unlike DVD. I have heard there's some dumb-sounding techique though but I don't exactly understand. Any article might answer my question as well, if it's possible for me to understand.

I do have noticed, of course. Still, exclusives being rare does not equal to no exclusives. You got SE right but there's one western one as well. I mean Ubisoft. Haze (although it's probably getting ported if it doesn't do well) and SC: Conviction (might get ported later though) are good examples from them. AFAIK it's because the devs of those games wanted the games to be exclusives and they were given a chance. So why not Sony-oriented Kojima? He seems ready to accept a port any time if it's needed, but only if it's needed. Konami seems to listen him, although I think there's been some noticable pressure (but not lately). Oh, and you didn't answer my question. There are still some exclusives. Tell me why.

I hope nobody is arguing that Metal Gear Solid 4 is going to sell well. There is no doubt about that.

But this thread suggests the pre-orders are dissapointing which they are not - the game won´t sell much more than 1 million copies in Japan, so 200k units first week is pretty much in line with expectations. Don´t forget that shops can still order more copies of the game if it sells out. They are just conservative, that´s all.

If the game sells 350k units in the US during the first week the legs should carry it above 1.2 million sales in any case. That´s a good result considering the userbase of the PS3 in America.

Europe is where the game has to show the best sales because Metal Gear Solid was always most popular in Europe. We can´t determing whether the game will sell well in Europe or not but 1 million units seems like a given considering the PS3´s popularity here and the sales of previous installments.

 That is so sad....

Anyway June 12 is almost at the horizon and poor sales or what... I'm getting the bundle!

I don't know what you mean, i mean for all we know Sony could be giving money to Ubisoft for Haze and Microsoft could be giving money for Splinter Cell. I have no idea why Ubisoft would voluntarily make Haze a PS3 exclusive for free, it would probably sell more or at least very well on the 360. SC is a game that's gonna sell way better on 360 even if it is multi-platform probably similar ratio to rainbow six. They may have just decided it wasn't worth it, or they may have got a little cash incentive, i dunno.

Unreal Tournament would have sold way better if it had not been a PS3 exclusive, there was certainly some money being thrown at them. We know that exclusives are almost dead when games like dynasty warriors gundam are being put on 360 even though most of the sales have been in Japan.

Kojima has more power than most people do in the industry, i'm pretty sure he's given quite a bit of freedom. He would not have allowed them to make force him to make the game with the 360 in mind. Of course he will allow a port later, but he has done that in the past it's not surprising.

 Depends on the channel output and bit depth.  But yes, that's stereo at 16 bit (bascially 9 hours fo CD audio).

5.1 and 7.1 at higher bit depths (24 bit) take up much more space.

It's about 2.6 GB per hour of 5.1 channel 24 bit uncompressed audio.

About MGS4 on 360, Kojima already said : No, f*ck no! and for the last time, no f*ckn' NO, don't ask, won't happen. DONE.

Dealing with disc space is trivial. As a developer who has worked on a cross PC/PS2/XBOX (etc) title - the PC version took *much* more space than the other builds, yet was really trivial to get around. Its not even worth discussing. Of all the issues you can have porting a game from one platform to another, this is generally by far the easiest to take care of - especially when the game is "filled" with cutscenes.

How many non-MS or Sony funded titles have ended up staying on a single platform? Not many. The allure of "doubling your profit" can be an attractive one. 

Konami may not end up doing the port themselves - but if it sells below expectations, there will be significant pressure from management to release a 360 "port". 

MGS4 won't come to the 360. Kojima Prods. have stated several times that MGS4 was being developed especially for PS3 hardware. Besides the only reason people want it on the 360 is so they can take a PS3 exclusive away and most MGS fans aren't going to wait 2 or 3 more years to get a crappy port.

A lot of places limit pre-ordering. They want a majority of copies to be first come, first serve.

I agree.  They would struggle to make the Wii accept a game of such poor technical quality.  The sheer power of the Wii would unanimously reject the puny MGS4!

Wii FTW!!!!