Metal Gear Solid: Rising

Metal Gear Solid prequel? Sequel? FILL IN THE BLANK SEQUENCE BETWEEN GAMES!?! Metal Gear Solid: Rising has been announced at the e3 conference. Tru faq time: it's for the 360.

What does this mean, though?

Well, for some time, series creator Hideo Kojima has been seen around 360 events, talking with people and generally having an air of rumor about him over the Tubes about the future of the Metal Gear series and possible future interaction with the XBox. Does this mean anything for MGS4 and the 360? Who knows.

What it does say is that MGS is going multi-platform in its current iteration and that Raiden is the current face of the franchise over at Microsoft. Additionally, MGS5 and Konami's PSP title are still up in the air (see previous update for more clarity on this).

Knowing Raiden is a cyborg ninja in the promo images, I would imagine the game is set between MGS2 and 4, during the time Raiden goes about searching for Sunny and transforming from blank-slate protagonist to ultra-cool future robot fighter guy. This would leave lots of room for exploration of details between games not addressed or all that important in MGS4, but still something of note from MGS2 absent in 4 (and would tie the last MGS title for the XBox to its most recent game).

But that's just speculation on my part.