Hideo Kojima dismisses HD and 1080p, sort of

by Nick Doerr { Jan 5th 2007 at 2:00PM }

We picked up a GamePro magazine a couple of days back, because we like to read printed material every once in a while. Even though news travels so much faster on this crazy "series of tubes" called the internet, there are a few interviews and such that remain under the radar until the magazine hits shelves. One such interview was with Hideo Kojima, mastermind behind the Metal Gear games. Let's go over the key things we drew from his interview.

In MGS4, Snake won't be utilizing his back-to-the-wall move anymore -- Hideo says it's not a very realistic move for the battlefield Snake will be on. You can hide behind stuff, take a peek out, then shoot, though.
Blu-ray isn't all it's cracked up to be. Hold on. He says that a basic gameplay frame, HD visuals, and 5.1 sound takes up so much space that the advanced capacity of a Blu-ray is used up in no time. What does that say for plain ol' DVD's, then? MGS4 on multiple discs, perhaps?
Kojima wants to try out the Wii after MGS4 wraps up -- supposedly. What could he be planning?
Hideo doesn't care for HD at all. He purposely made the graphics appear dirtier than more generic "clean" screenshots, to bring a more realistic life to the atmosphere. That's good.

So what have we learned here? Blu-ray is easy to fill up, HD graphics can make things look like plastic and unrealistic, Snake will have to find another signature stealth pose, and the Wii is interesting. Sounds like any other day, really. I mean, I have GI Joes in my closet to play with if I want plastic-laden soldiers. I demand scarring and mud on my PS3 warriors and I will have it! Eventually.

[via GamePro magazine]

Tags: Hideo Kojima, HideoKojima, Konami, Metal Gear Solid, MetalGearSolid, Playstation 3, Playstation3, PS3, Sony

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Blue @ Jan 5th 2007 3:14PM

Actually, I'm excited to hear Kojima is considering the Wii. Everytime that guy makes a game, he comes up with crazy stuff. (The dualshock vibration to simulate nanomachines massaging you, the reading of memory card data, unplugging controllers and placing them in different jacks)

If he does something for the Wii, it'll be brilliant and original, whatever it is.

FrankTheCrank @ Jan 5th 2007 3:22PM

Hideo...

SHUT YOUR MOUTH AND KNOW YOUR ROLE!!!

JUST PUMP OUT MGS4 and shut the F up!!!

BTW, MGS5 soon on the NES....stupid shit!

UGHHH @ Jan 5th 2007 4:00PM

Hmmm,so all the games we look forward to are old games i.e MGS"4",Rachet and crank"5",Tekken "Whatever",Grand Tourisimo "Whatever" etc WHERE ARE THE ORIGINAL NEXT GEN GAMES ON PS3 ? 360 has a bucket load of new next gen titles come March.

LOL @ Jan 5th 2007 4:09PM

"Blu-ray isn't all it's cracked up to be"
OH DEAR it's not looking good when after the Film pros say they can't see a lot of difference between normal DVD quality and Blueray and now a game programming master has now more or less dismissed Blu ray as just another average format.(Maybe those plain old DVD load in a lot quicker).

Hercu @ Jan 5th 2007 4:20PM

"Blu-ray isn't all it's cracked up to be. Hold on. He says that a basic gameplay frame, HD visuals, and 5.1 sound takes up so much space that the advanced capacity of a Blu-ray is used up in no time"

HA HA OH DEAR,
Blu Ray are you another Betamax?.

Kojima rocks @ Jan 6th 2007 4:30AM

"WHERE ARE THE ORIGINAL NEXT GEN GAMES ON PS3 ? 360 has a bucket load of new next gen titles come March"

Well lets see...what would you call resistance (More story than ALL the 360 shooters combined) Motorstorm, Lair, Heavenly Sword, Warhawk. And remember at this stage the only semi-decent games on 360 are Saints row (GTA rip-off), Dead rising (RE redux), PDZ (A travesty of PERFECT dark), GoW (shorter version of Killswitch with better graphics, ideas copied fronm RE4 as well) Gotham (ever played Sega's MSR anyone?)

And what does MS have in store? cheesy RPG copies of FF (blue dragon), Forza (GT copy, well made though), The next Halo, Lost planet (yet ANOTHER alien shooter), etc etc. The only original games? mass effect and Bioshock (which will be far better on PC anyway)

The truth @ Jan 5th 2007 4:56PM

@5 you talk nonsense you could reply that your answers apply to any game,i.e All were original Amiga or Atari game etc, the PS3 has NOTHING new.The 360 come March has a huge amount of games so let's just wait until March and see.

Football @ Jan 5th 2007 5:19PM

\Why is there no Football games on PS3?

Strike Man @ Jan 5th 2007 5:10PM

(Seems my last comment didn't go through?) :o

"Kojima rocks", that little game can be played in both directions.
Motorstorm? Ooh, an offroad racing game? Haven't seen one of those on a Sony console before!
Lair? They just replaced X-Wings with dragons!
Heavenly Sword? I played it the first time when it was called God of War!
Warhawk? I played it the first time when it was called...Warhawk!

Back on topic though, I'm surprised to hear Kojima say something along these lines, especially since you can have your dirty and gritty graphics AND run them in HD resolutions. If he's going to go the "screw next-gen graphics" route, hopefully he'll do another adventure game along the lines of Snatcher.

foot @ Jan 5th 2007 5:33PM

"8. \\Why is there no Football games on PS3?"

LOL Because 360 like PS2 used to do has rights to them being only 360 for 1 year I do believe.

Ciaran Gallagher @ Jan 5th 2007 8:07PM

In the meantime, double-sided Xbox 360 discs have allowed for amazing games but I worry that maybe things can only get better with more space?
So far, the extra space hasn't produced anything better than 360 yet though!

Arya @ Jan 6th 2007 12:12AM

I'm surprised at Kojima's comments. The bash at HD is an ignorant comment... he doesn't seem like an ignorant person though. Any idiot knows that HD is nothing more than a higher resolution. And anyone with any CG experience knows how much more involved and space consuming it is to "dirty up" images. All that bump mapping, complex surface molding, those shadows, etc... It's much easier to make a perfect image than it is to add imperfections.

About the Wii though; if innovative developers like Kojima keep showing interest in the Wii then it can very well progress past just being a gimick.

I guess the Xbox360 fanboys really have nothing better to do than search for ways to bash the PS3. Yeah, launch games suck for the most part... but then again nothing about the Xbox360 tempted me until this past fall. I don't get why game exclusivity is such a big deal. So future games are coming out for Xbox and PS3... isn't that a good thing? What they should really do is find a way to make the PS network compatable with Xbox live so people with the same games don't need the same system.

Aleks @ Jan 6th 2007 5:51AM

Well, his Wii project is the one he's doing with Suda51. Suda was gonna finish No More Heroes while Hideo finished MGS4. Then they were gonna make a Wii game together.

Snatcher 2, anyone?

Burnt Meatloaf @ Jan 6th 2007 6:19AM

@Arya: Well said. The relentless HD bashing from Wii proponents drives me nuts. Do these people not understand anything about CGI? Even old games with low-res textures look a whole lot better in HD (ever see a Playstaion emulator on a PC? Stunning).

That goes for dev budgets, too. HD visuals really have no impact on your budget unless you're just a really lame developer.

Blu-ray fills up too fast? Gee, would a 1TB X-ray disc format be enough for you? Probably not. Common sense is even better than compression.

dybot @ Jan 6th 2007 8:52AM

Just for your information Kojima is talking about HD videos filling up Blu-Ray, he is just highlighting his anger against High Definition as videos waste far more space than in 480i/p. Although he usually does all cut scenes in-game he wants to include some videos too.

We all know if he were talking about gameplay there is no way it would remotely require more than a single layer Blu-Ray, the hardware simply can't process higher resolution textures. He loves special features and I bet he will include something like with MGS3

kc @ Feb 1st 2007 5:21PM

MGS4 will rule man,i have a 360 and to me there arent that many good games besides dead rising,GoW, and Madden 07.I heard the Wii sucks i know someone who got it for Christmas and he took it back a few days later,to me it looks like the PS3 will win the war :D