Bloody Hell, Konami! Metal Gear Solid Delta's Multiplayer Just Pulled a Classic Move: No Crossplay.
AI Gaming News Author · IGN South Africa ·
Konami's dropped a bit of a classic on us, mate: Metal Gear Solid Delta's new Fox Hunt multiplayer mode won't have crossplay when it finally lands, and fans are, predictably, not best pleased about being left to play in their own little platform bubbles.
Right, so you know that feeling when you're super hyped for a new game, you’re counting down the days, and then the developers drop a truth bomb that feels less like a calculated stealth attack and more like they just accidentally blew up the comms tower? Yeah, that’s pretty much where we’re at with Konami and the upcoming Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.
First, we got the news last week that Fox Hunt, the shiny new multiplayer mode, wouldn’t be launching alongside the main single-player epic on August 28th. A bit of a bummer, sure, but understandable in this day and age of post-launch content. We’ve all been there, right? Ship the core game, patch in the extras later. Fair enough. But then, Konami, in what feels like a perfectly executed, if slightly frustrating, stealth maneuver of its own, decided to add another layer to this particular digital onion. And mate, it’s not going down well.
Turns out, when Fox Hunt *does* eventually arrive sometime this fall, it won't have crossplay. Zip. Zero. Nada. If you’re on PC via Steam, you won't be playing with your mates on PlayStation 5. And if you’re on PS5, well, tough luck for your Xbox Series X/S pals. It's like they're building separate digital fortresses, and your gaming buddies are stuck outside in the digital moat.
Now, you can imagine how the gaming community, always a bastion of calm and measured responses (joke!), took this news. 'Severely disappointing' was one of the kinder phrases lobbed around the digital town square. I’ve seen comments ranging from 'Why not? Konami IDs have existed forever. Use ‘em!' – which, fair dinkum, is a valid point – to 'I have friends who play on different platforms. Now I won’t be able to play with them. This game mode will be dead on arrival if it doesn’t have crossplay.' And let’s not forget the classic 'Battlefield 6 will be getting my money' from someone who clearly values playing with their entire crew over platform segregation.
And honestly, you can’t blame 'em. In an era where crossplay is becoming less of a 'nice-to-have' and more of a 'must-have' for any serious multiplayer offering, this decision feels... well, it feels like Konami is still using a rotary phone in a smartphone world. When the entire industry is striving to connect players, regardless of their preferred glowing box, to deliberately fence off the community just seems like an own goal.
For those who haven't been keeping up, Fox Hunt is supposed to be a fresh take on multiplayer stealth and survival. Konami has previously spruiked it as taking 'camouflage and hide and go seek to the next level,' promising something different from your usual run-and-gun Call of Duty-style frag fest. And to be fair, Metal Gear Solid isn't a stranger to multiplayer. We had Metal Gear Online bundled with MGS4 back in 2008, which, for all its quirks, managed to keep its servers alive for a respectable four years. Yu Sahara, the director for Fox Hunt, even acknowledged that many fans think of MGO when they hear 'Metal Gear multiplayer' but stressed that Fox Hunt would be its 'own new type of mode.' He also mentioned the 'landscape of multiplayer games has changed a lot since MGO.'
And that’s where my gentle skepticism meter starts blinking a bit furiously. Yes, the landscape has changed, Mr. Sahara. It’s changed to one where players expect to be able to jump into a lobby with their mates, regardless of whether they splurged on a PS5, an Xbox, or a high-end PC. It's changed to one where fractured player bases lead to longer matchmaking times, smaller communities, and, ultimately, game modes that fizzle out long before their time. If the landscape has changed, surely it's shifted towards *more* connectivity, not less, right? Saying the landscape has changed feels a bit like saying 'the weather's different now' when asked why you forgot your umbrella. Not entirely false, but perhaps not the *root* cause of the issue.
This isn't some tiny indie studio struggling with server architecture, mate. This is Konami, a giant in the gaming world. They’ve got the resources. They’ve got the history. So, to announce a delayed multiplayer mode *and then* confirm it won’t have crossplay? It just baffles the digital wizard in me. It makes you wonder what kind of spell went wrong in the development cauldron. Was it a budget constraint? A technical hurdle they just couldn't clear? Or a philosophical choice that simply doesn't align with how modern gamers, you know, *game*?
The risk here is obvious. If a platform’s player count dips, that version of Fox Hunt could become a ghost town quicker than you can say 'Snake, what are you doing in that box?' And that's a damn shame, because a genuinely innovative stealth-based multiplayer mode sounds like a right laugh. But without the ability to connect everyone, it’s like building a brilliant, intricate maze but only letting a few people in through separate, tiny doors. The magic just isn't there if you can't share the adventure.
So, as we gear up for Metal Gear Solid Delta’s single-player launch – which, let’s be clear, still looks absolutely stunning and is what most of us are here for – we’ll also be watching Fox Hunt’s post-launch arrival with a mix of curiosity and concern. Can a 'new type of mode' survive without the fundamental connective tissue of crossplay in today’s gaming world? I reckon that's a gamble even Solid Snake might think twice about.
Tags: Metal Gear Solid, Konami, Multiplayer, Crossplay, Gaming News
Original article: IGN South Africa