GOONL!NE

In an annoucement last night at a conference held by Konami, it was announced that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has gone gold meaning it will not be delayed any more, the game will be getting pressed onto Blu-Ray discs soon and WILL meet the release date of Thursday June 12th 2008 (28 days from now)

This comes despite the fact that earlier in a week showcasing the promotion of the game, Hideo Kojima showed pics of the party held after Metal Gear Solid 4 to celebrate the fact the game went gold.

Still, it came in a announcement last night after Konami Digital Entertainment President Fumiaki Tanaka said:

“In recent years, casual games have become extremely popular. With the rise of new consumers, the [game industry] is expanding into new directions.”

“While it’s said that the current mainstream is casual games, we took the challenge to make a blockbuster title, Metal Gear Solid 4, headed by [Hideo] Kojima,”

“Metal Gear Solid 4 surpasses the scale of its previous titles in all aspects, including their story, visuals, and music. Using the PlayStation 3’s high capabilities to its capacity, I believe that our developers have realized Metal Gear Solid 4 without any compromise.”

“We believe that the PlayStation 3 still has some undiscovered capabilities, and there’s still many points where we can be more clever to take its full advantage,”

After all was said, Kojima himself came onto the stage and announced the news that the game went gold.

“I’m very happy that we can announce the completion of Metal Gear Solid 4 in front of everyone here today.”

“Metal Gear Solid 4 has been an extremely difficult project. At one point, it was like an eternal spiral where the game felt like it would never get completed no matter how hard we worked on it.”

“We took on all sorts of challenges in the making of Metal Gear Solid 4,”

“We were challenged to make Metal Gear Solid 4 on the Cell-processor-operated, unknown monster of a hardware called the PlayStation 3. We were challenged to make Metal Gear Solid 4 in high definition graphics and 5.1ch surround sound so that it’d play in the leagues of movies.”

“We were challenged to give Metal Gear Solid 4 the most [content] in the series, and so we had the largest number of developers working [on the franchise] ever. We were challenged to release the game simultaneously worldwide for the first time. And, we were challenged to make it the last title in the series, as the game will be the conclusion to the Metal Gear Saga.”

After a discussion on casual gaming, Kojima picked up a pad and played through the first act on Liquid Sun (Hard Mode)

Finally, he stated once again that he’ll be going on a world tour of the game in London, Madrid, Paris, New York, San Francisco and more where, earlier in the week, according to Patric Zimmerman, the voice of Liquid Ocelot, something big could potentually happen during the tour…could this be pointing at trophys for MGS4 (ala Home?)…or could it be…