Comparing Metal Gear Solid 4 to Ground Zeroes is "nonsense," says Kojima

It would be silly to directly compare Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots because the games are vastly different, Hideo Kojima has said. Posting on Twitter last night, Kojima said it it "nonsense" to compare his latest effort to 2008's PlayStation 3 game because because Ground Zeroes is an open-world game, while MGS4 was not.

Ground Zeroes is also expected to be substantially shorter than MGS4 because it is a prequel to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and not fully its own game.

Kojima also responded to criticism about Ground Zeroes after publisher Konami released a handful of images comparing the current- and next-generation versions of the game yesterday. He said the Xbox One and PS4 versions will indeed be visually superior, but stressed that the developer's visual style should remain consistent across console generations.

"I published comparison images of consoles since I get so many questions. Once I said the contents & controls can be equally amused by player as we carefully adjusted, people say 'then next-gen is meaningless.' Well, I want people to play nextgen if they were able to buy, and for those who couldn't, play current-gen version as it is indeed [multiplatform]."

"Next-gen looks better because of its hi-spec, but what I want you to feel is the point the photo-realistic image we pursue in Fox Engine. Fox Engine made it even the current-gen look as good as next-gen," he added.

Finally, Kojima said the already announced Ground Zeroes comparison video showing off the visual differences between console generations might be published sometime today. We'll include that video here or in a new story if it does indeed arrive later today.

Ground Zeroes launches on March 18 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4. Sony will release a special Ground Zeroes limited-run PS4 console in Japan.