An article by Reuters questions if "Metal Gear Solid 4" could be last of the great exclusives? Soaring production costs mean its tough for 3rd party games to make a profit if they are limited to one console. Assistant producer Ryan Payton said the new "Metal Gear Solid" needs to sell over a million copies on the first day it goes on sale due to its costly production. He went on to say that "The PlayStation brand has always been good to us, and we're pretty bullish on the PS3." "We're telling our fans that if you want to play 'Metal Gear Solid 4', you have to buy a PS3," said Ryan Payton. Will MGS 4 be a killer app? Will this be the game that gets people sitting on the fence to buy a PS3?

As of October, only 2 million PS3s had been sold in the United States, compared to 5.2 million Wii consoles from rival Nintendo and 7.2 million Xbox 360s from Microsoft, according to market research firm NPD.

A year after its release, only two PS3 games have sold more than 1 million copies, a benchmark of financial success for a big-budget game. The 7-year-old PlayStation 2 had nearly 100 games sell more than a million copies.

Top next-generation video games cost between $10 million and $50 million, according to IDC videogame analyst Billy Pidgeon. That means publishers must hedge their bets by going onto as many platforms as possible.

"You might be able to weather one title coming in at 500,000 in sales," said Pidgeon. "But two or three failures like that and even big publishers are going to be hurting."

Several former PlayStation exclusives, including "Grand Theft Auto," "Virtua Fighter" and "Devil May Cry," are now appearing on rival consoles, making the benefits of purchasing a PS3 questionable to some hard-core game buyers.

Some people think even "MGS4" might not be compelling enough to turn the sales tide.

"No, 'Metal Gear Solid 4' isn't the killer app," said Adam Sessler, a video game critic on the G4 network. "People who already own a PS3 will likely get it. But it doesn't have that kind of broad-based appeal."