A few days ago Xboxfamily.com broke the news that Kojima’s last Metal Gear Solid game will be stripped off of its “PS3-exclusive” status and will be ported on the Xbox 360.

Although official confirmation from either Microsoft or Konami lacked, the site continued to claim that the rumor about an Xbox 360-port for MGS4 is…solid enough to be publishable. To support such allegation, Xboxfamily.com insisted that the news came “straight from a Konami distribution rep’s mouth”. According to that undisclosed source, Metal Gear Solid 4 would debut on the Xbox 360 12 to 14 months after the PS3 version.

However, another Konami representative dismissed the rumor and re-confirmed MGS 4: Guns of the Patriots as a PlayStation 3 exclusive. "For the record, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is a PlayStation 3 exclusive and there are no plans to develop an Xbox 360 version of the game," said Konami’s official.

Plans for a cross-platform MGS4 are not completely dead though. Around this time last year Capcom was making the final preparations for the debut of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition- the company’s first exclusive Xbox 360 title. In the mean time things have changed and the game’s code was ported on the PC last summer, with a PS3 version expected this winter.

While Capcom’s history might not be a clear indication of how MGS4 will become a multi-platform game, it still points to the fact that profit usually grows when you have three categories of gamers as your target population, instead of just one. And there’s an economic argument too: Xbox 360 has a larger install base compared the PS3 (and that install base will still be larger when MGS4 launches in June).