"A reliable source from the popular gaming industry dicussion forum, neoGAF, has reported details concerning the questioned installs times in Metal Gear Solid 4.

Periodic installations will occur as you play through each act of the story. Below are the specific install times below for each segment of the title.

Start-up: 8 Minutes
Act 2: 3 Minutes
Act 3: 3 Minutes
Act 4: 2 Minutes
Act 5: 1 Minute

The total install size is set at roughly 4.6GBs of data.

Unlike similar games though, MGS4 won’t just have you sitting around whilt the data slooooooowly installs itself onto your hard-drive.Instead, you’ll be treated to conversations between characters as the data is written to your PS3, making the whole experience seamless."

 - Source

well at least that means you get to understand the story of the game better then watch a loading bar or black screen.

thats not as big as i thought not big deal to me

awsome!

not to bad shorter than devil may cry or atleast will seem like it but anyways way excited for MGS4 will be getting my copy at a midnight realse ill be playin all damn night

At this rate ppl will be needing more HDD space as most of their hard drive will be filled with these installations.

seems perfectly acceptable

i think the way they have masked the install times is very clever, and you'll never notice it happening.

I noticed loading times after some cinematics that lasted about two to three seconds. Not too long, but its there.

So they diss disc changing while installing? Very smooth....but it's pretty awesome though. We won't have to notice that an install in going on.