Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes Gets A Perma-Price-Drop

If you can’t spend the holidays with family this year, why not spend it infiltrating a large private military base run by a man who goes by the name Skull Face? I mean, it’s practically the same thing, right? And now that Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes has seen a permanent price cut, you can do exactly that for cheaper than ever before.

It’s no secret that folks were a little—shall we say—upset about the initial price tag attached to Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes when it launched earlier this year. The game was originally slated to cost 40 bucks but, once word got out that the main content would only take players an hour or two to get through, consumer outcry led to the title being dropped to around $30 before it finally launched.

Some would argue that the new price point was still a bit on the steep side. While the map is certainly large enough and more methodical players could probably stretch the initial runtime a bit more, even a handful of alternate objectives couldn’t hide the fact that people were being asked to pay half the price of a regular AAA game that only consisted of a single mission and some variants. Sure, you could argue that seeing everything hidden within the game could take you hours upon hours to achieve but, let’s face it, only the most dedicated of players would bother diving that deep into a single map.

Thankfully, the game played great, looked great and offered some new mechanics that have me very, very excited for the release of The Phantom Pain, slated to arrive sometime between now and the inevitable heat death of the universe. But even an extremely polished two-hour “campaign” is still just a two-hour campaign people were being asked to spend 30 bucks on.

For those of you who refused to budge after the initial price drop, perhaps another $10 off of that price tag will finally convince you to give Ground Zeroes a spin. Konami announced exactly that earlier today, stating in a press release that the game will be receiving a permanent price drop to $19.99.

Here’s a bit of a pitch from the Konami folks themselves.

“The events in Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes dovetail directly into events in Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain,” reads the statement. “The acclaimed prologue acts as an entry experience and introduces key gameplay components that will be explored in the fifth, full Metal Gear Solid epic and as a bridge between the linearity of existing titles and the full open-world environments of Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain.”

I’m a huge Metal Gear fan, but even I remain shaky on this matter. By comparison, P.T. was made by the same folks and kept me playing for the same amount of time, yet that particular “Playable Trailer” was given away completely free. I’m not saying we shouldn’t pay for these games, just that the price point should maybe match what we’re going to be getting out of the experience.