First announced at EA, Kojima and Konami have kept their Metal Gear Arcade under wraps pretty well. Well, those wraps are still tightly bound but at least we have a few details and the above picture to hold us over thanks to the latest issue of Famitsu.

According ot the magazine, players will control the arcade while sitting down, wearing 3D glasses using a controller that allows for seperate movement and viewpoint control. Better yeah, in addition to being able to play solo players will get the chance to participate in up to 16-player co-op. Sounds awesome.

Unfortunately, there is no word on if Metal Gear Arcade will ever make it stateside but for those in Japan, it is set to hit arcades over there later this year.

Read (Joystiq)

It looks like Sony has finally taken a hint and contracted one of their most loyal developers, Konami, to give the PSP’s game library a little wake up call — Recently announced during E3 is Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, a PSP exclusive that isn’t a port in any way shape or form.

Peace Walker apparantly takes place 10 years after the happenings of Metal Gear Solid 3 and stars none other than Solid Snake. The best part, however, is that Hideo Kojima will be diverting his attention away from the Xbox 360 Metal Gear to focus completely on Peace Walker which means it’s sure to be a hit.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker will be released for the PSP sometime in 2010.

Seriously, Kojima-san, this is getting ridiculous. Get it over with already. Or get some decent PR people.

"Maybe we can do some announcement during E3," said Kojima during a Q&A session held at a San Francisco Apple Store. He was there to promote the iPhone release of Metal Gear Solid Touch.

"I can’t really speak specifically right now," he added.

Kojima is known to have four unannounced projects in the works, with the first due out by the end of the year.

This year’s E3 takes place June 2-4 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The interview also carries some other interesting stuff, including a part where Kojima reveals that he is addicted to Valve’s recent zombie shooter Left 4 Dead.

“I’m addicted to Left 4 Dead right now, but people say to me that that game would never work in Japan…maybe I should quit being Japanese,” he said and laughed.

Kojima also talks about how Japanese developers have fallen behind their Western counterparts, among other things.

According to a 1UP translation of an interview in Famitsu, one of the two titles is being aimed towards western gamers. Seeing as how Kojima’s third-person action games have done so well around the world, many are speculating that the title in question is a first-person shooter, as the genre is popular in the West.

Kojima noted that the title will coincide with the restructuring of the studio, adding that it will be a “makeover from the ground up.” He hopes that the studio will be able to compete with top developers around the world.

No information on the other game is known. However, Kojima has stated that it will be formally unveiled first and will be developed in a more traditional studio environment, unaffected by the upcoming makeover.

"I have three concepts for MGS5 already," he said. "What would be ideal for me with MGS5, though, is that we don’t do those. If the team picks one of those concepts, I have to get involved again, which I don’t want to do."

He hopes that the team will follow one of the “many good ideas”.

"At that point I could really rely on them and take the step back to be the producer, which is the ideal situation," he said.

Finally, Kojima expressed his desire to create “something new”, but he knows that it might not “sell very well”, but that he is still “warming this up” and that he is still changing and morphing ideas so the final outcome will be hopefully better.

“Yes, I put everything in the cut sequences, which I kind of regret to some extent,” he said, adding that “maybe there is a new approach I should think about.”

Kojima then goes on to state that putting interactive cut-scenes that has become the recent trend in the games industry would have made it difficult for him to tell a story. “If I make multiple storylines and allow the users to select which story, this might really sacrifice the deep emotion the user might feel,” said the man. “When there’s a concrete storyline, and you kind of go along that rail, you feel the destiny of the story, which at the end, makes you feel more moved.

“But when you make it interactive – if you want multiple stories where you go one way or another – will that make the player more moved when he or she finishes the game? These two points are really the key which I am thinking about, and if this works, I think I could probably introduce a more interactive storytelling method.”

In related news, a fifth game in the series has been confirmed.

Leaving Kojima Productions for greener pasture, he revealed that “it’ll be hard not being involved in MGS5, but I’ve got the utmost confidence that Hideo Kojima, Ken Imaizumi and our amazing team will put together another blockbuster game.”

With the sequel years away, let’s focus on MGS4, on which many flamewars erupt in forums netwide, with gamers fighting over whether the game will be making its way to the Xbox 360.

Raining on the parade, Hideo Kojima reveals that “because [it] was optimized for the PS3 it is probably not possible [on the Xbox 360]“. He cited media and technology differences, among other things. He also seems annoyed at people for this reason.

“What kind of disturbs me sometimes, because a lot of people ask me about this PS3/360 question, is that it’s not about the hardware,” he said. “I want people to look at the game itself. Sometimes I even feel like it should be on a PC so that people don’t ask me about hardware and platforms.”