MGS4 too big for Blu-ray?

While the release date is surely good news, the weekly Kojima Productions Report podcast delivered a bit of an unsavory tidbit for Japanese-language purists living abroad. Responding to a fan's question of whether or not there would be Japanese audio in the North American and European versions of MGS4, assistant producer Ryan Payton said, "Unfortunately, because of disc space, we don't have the space to include the other languages--the other voice-over files--for the respective versions. So the Japanese version won't have English VO, and the NA and Euro versions won't have Japanese VO."

Payton's sentiments echo Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima's own in a recent interview the gaming legend did with Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu. In the interview, Kojima noted that he still isn't satisfied with the game's visual quality, but because of capacity constraints, the team had to make certain compromises to get the entire game to fit on Sony's Blu-ray Disc. Whereas traditional double-layered DVDs max out at 8.5GB, dual-layered Blu-ray discs accommodate a spacious 50GB worth of data. However, single-layered Blu-ray discs are only 25GB a side--and noone from Kojima Productions has revealed what size MGS4 actually is.