Metal Gear Solid 5 Release Date: Game Could be Delayed to 2015, Depends ‘On How Ground Zeroes Goes’

If you are one of those waiting for Snake’s newest exploits via the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, here’s a bit of downer. According to reports, the next Metal Gear Solid title will receive a potential release date depending on how Ground Zeroes perform. And if necessary, the release date for the game can be pushed to 2015.

Revealing the latest information via his official Twitter page, senior research analyst David Gibson wrote: “Konami saying MGS5 release timing will depend on how Ground Zeroes goes first combined with next generation, then decide if 2014 or 2015.”

There has been a confusion regarding both Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain for a while now. When Kojima first revealed Ground Zeroes, there was a widespread belief that this would be the next title in the Metal Gear Solid franchise.

However, as soon as The Phantom Pain was announced, creator Hideo Kojima went on to classify Ground Zeroes as a prologue and The Phantom Pain, which contains the majority volume of the game, as an epilogue.

As far as a striking difference between both Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain is concerned, Hideo Kojima earlier stated: “The advanced capabilities of the FOX Engine have allowed me to tell the new story in a new way. There will be a significant difference in what Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain brings to the series, so we want to ease players into the new open world environment and its potential.”

“As such, Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes has been designed to introduce key elements, allowing them to fully benefit from all that the new game will offer."

In fact, that one title serves as a prologue for the other was revealed via Kojima himself back in March when it was stated in a Twitlonger post that Ground Zeroes “is a prologue of ‘MGSV’.”

“9 years after that event will be ‘The Phantom Pain.’ MGSV is constructed w/ prologue and main game ‘TPP’ [The Phantom Pain]. The game play demo I presented today is the opening of 'TPP' which is tutorial that starts from crawling.”

Metal Gear Solid 5 is currently scheduled for release on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3, although no official release date has been announced.