[creating new user experiences]," and "focusing on further expanding and revitalizing esports. One interesting tidbit, however: since its release in July 1987, the "Metal Gear" series has sold a total of 60 million units.

This figure is as of the end of June of this year; as the Wayback Machine indicates, by the end of September 2022, when Konami last tallied sales, the Metal Gear series had sold 59.3 million units. That's despite the fact that there hasn't been a new installment in the series since the unloved Metal Gear: 700,000 copies sold in just nine months, despite the fact that there hasn't been a new installment in the series since 2018's Survive.

This certainly goes some way to explaining why Konami has such extensive plans to continue offering the series. The Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1 is currently scheduled for release on October 24 and will include even the unauthorized games that director Hideo Kojima hated. (In case you haven't been keeping up with Metal Gear's puzzling and convoluted history, that's "Metal Gear 2: Revenge of Snake.")

That collection includes "Metal Gear," "Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake," "Metal Gear Solid" (including VR missions/special missions), "Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty" (HD Collection version), "Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater (HD Collection version), Metal Gear (NES version), and Snake's Revengeance will be included, along with bonus material such as scripts and music.

Konami notes on each Steam page for the Master Collection that "keyboard and mouse play is not supported," but we'll have to wait and see if that is actually the case for all the games in the bundle. The PC ports of the previous two games had mouse and keyboard support.

When Master Collection Vol. 2 is released, Metal Gear Solid 4 will finally be released from the PlayStation 4's prison.