Not only the game's engine was heavily tied to PS3's Cell architecture, but also the game must be a bitch to re-release because of licenses and branding (weapons with real names, iPod as an item, several in-game allusions to the PS3 and Sony...). Emulation is the only way forward I see for it, short of a remake.
Yeah, I don't think Kojima was thinking about longevity with any of his games. Pretty sure thousands of people got screwed over back in the day with Meryl's codec frequency on used copies of MGS1.
I don't really care to play MGS4 for myself, though. MGS1 ends with Snake and Meryl going off to live life together in Alaska, but then in MGS4, Snake's body is falling apart because of retcon clone bullshit and Meryl's fucking the diarrhea guy. I hear the whole game is 80% cutscene, anyway.
MGS4 is pretty strange. Probably the worst plot in the series, great music, relatively uninteresting bosses, strong gameplay. I get why someone would say it's their least favorite but I find it compelling. The cutscenes are a lot, especially the last one which I think is like 2 hours.
the problem with MGS4 is precisely that it's "strong gameplay" is scraped across 5 minute sections. Its the worst level design in the series by far. Its particularly infuriating because there are all these cool mechanics and ideas you will never get to use because Kojima is going to drop a fucking cutscene on you in 20 feet.
Pretty strange is right. As a proportion, I remember reading nearly 50% of the game is cutscenes. It goes to show Kojima's cultural cachet and the times we were living in, because it got near universal acclaim and sold a gazillion copies. Then again, this was the era of
moviegames like Uncharted and so on.