Well there really was not that much competition on the PS3 opposed to the PS2 when MGS 2 and 3 came out.
A big fish in a small pond you might say.

Because its a freaking amazing 9.9/10 game.

I went with the "less variety" option, though "better advertising" and "devoted fanbase" are also true- I thought the first had the most effect.

I included the "better advertising" option because that can be an important factor for sales of a game, but for as MGS4 specifically I don't remember any specific advertising. Does anybody have any anecdotes or a link to something about the marketing of MGS4, or the PS2 Metal Gear Solid games, did MGS4 get more significant promotion/advertising compared to the PS2 games?

Well MGS sold well due to a lot of factors, large userbase helps but just look at the sales of some Gamecube games to see that even on limited userbase some games can sell like crazy.

The game has a very loyal userbase, that simply bought PS3's primaraly to play this game.

At the time of its release this was (and somewhat still is) the ultimate PS3 exclusive to own, this helped it a lot when PS2 library was incredible, the PS3 library in terms of big exlcusives at the time was well rather limited, less competition = more sales

Intensive bundling and great advertising, MGS 4 ads where everywhere in the UK including the buses.

It had hype and it turned out to be a damn good game, that's why it sold so well.

@ Lolcislaw, nice post, well thought out, and I liked that you justify your reasoning.


There is about 10 minutes left until the poll expires. So everybody get your votes in, and I will post the results soon after.

I want to thank everyone who has participated in the thread, comments and views wise this was by far the most successful game of the day thread yet.  Please continue to comment in this thread now that the results are posted, and look out for another Game of the Day thread tomorrow.

As you can see “the franchise has a devoted fan base” dominated responses with 60% of the vote. Almost tripling the number of responses the next closest vote getter “less competition on PS3” got.  Way back in last was “better advertising” which received a measly 2%.

   My take: Metal Gear Solid 4 sold, 1.77 million in its first week of sales, or 42.3% of its current total, and sold 63% of its current total in its first month of sales. While that percentage will shrink somewhat as the game is still selling, that is a huge percentage. A game being very frontloaded suggests that the “it’s a better game than the PS2 version” probably didn’t have much of an impact, although it may be responsible for why the title is still selling some now.

    So I think the other four choices all played an important role.  I agree with the majority vote, that the franchise does have a devoted fan base.  That said, it seems if fans of the series were so invested in the games to be willing to upgrade to the PS3, why did those fans not pick up “Portable Ops” for PSP? So there have to be some other factors as well.

   I think the bundles played a large part in sales, evidenced by the huge increase in PS3 sales with the release of the bundle.  It also seemed that MGS4 sales dipped when the availability of the bundle dipped, so bundling obviously helped both MGS4 as well as PS3 hardware sales.

   In my opinion the lack of competition compared to the PS2 games is a factor, especially compared to the competition Metal Gear Solid 3 faced. MGS4’s biggest competition on the PS3 at launch was Grand Theft Auto 4 in its 7^th week, and was down to sub 100k sales worldwide by then.  It wasn’t for 6 weeks until the release of NCAA football that MGS4 was topped on the PS3, because of a lack of big releases during that period.  Contrastly MGS3, had to deal with Grand Theft Auto San Andreas which was selling strongly, Need for Speed Underground 2, and Gran Turismo 4.  All of which released recently before or after the launch of Metal Gear Solid 3.

 I think in conjunction with PS3 owners anticipating the next big game, the advertising and marketing for the game was able to build up anticipation for the title which is why the game had such a successful launch.

So that’s my take do you agree/disagree?  Are you surprised how one sided the votes were? Let us know what you think.