It's been a long time since we got an official entry in the Metal Gear Solid franchise. The last game in the series was the well-liked although far from perfect Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, which was also the final Metal Gear game produced by Hideo Kojima before he was unceremoniously ousted from Konami.
Well, ok, technically the last game in the series was Metal Gear Survive, but the less we say or think about that debacle the better.
Solid Snake hasn't done a whole lot since Phantom Pain, which is why it's quite a shock to hear about the new sales figures for the long-dormant stealth-action property. As reported on by the website Metal Gear Informer - take a guess as to what they're all about - the entire Metal Gear series has amassed a total of 58 million sales worldwide.
This news officially comes from the Konami website. According to a chart showing off their top-selling computer and video games, Metal Gear is their second-highest-grossing IP ranking below the eFootball series and above the PAWAFURU PUROYAKYU series. This is an updated sales figure as Metal Gear has apparently sold 900,000 additional copies since March 21, 2021.
This is not only a surprise given the fact that this series hasn't had a new game in quite a while but also because both Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 were removed from digital storefronts in November 2021 and have yet to be placed back on sale. This either means that a lot of people have recently picked up Metal Gear Solid 5, or they've just discovered the bonkers action of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, or that Metal Gear Survive is doing much better than we all thought it was.
It's obvious that there's still demand for a new Metal Gear game, although news on that topic has been pretty scarce. There have been rumors about a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3. There have also been rumblings that Konami may plan to lend properties like Metal Gear and Silent Hill to outside developers. However, nothing has been confirmed as of this time, so there's no reason to get excited just yet.
Right now, there's nothing for Metal Gear fans to do but wait and hope that something manages to draw Solid Snake out from whatever rock he's been hiding under. Who knows, maybe there's a chance that Konami will announce a new game in the series sometime this year.
Heck, maybe we might even get a sequel to Revengeance. After all, it's been too long since Raiden got to chop up watermelons with his robot body.