Konami admits blind spots: MGS4 retail leak inevitable

Our recent QuickPeek 50’s Comment of the Week pointed something out: Konami might have missed out on other minor retailers in their written agreement system of keeping MGS4‘s street date sacred. And true enough, yes: games still got leaked ahead of schedule. Konami’s released a new statement taking this into account, saying that Solid Snake‘s pre-scheduled recon missions around the consumer market were inevitable. Check your blind spots in the full article for more details.

When you’re distributing a product on a global scale, there are bound to be blind spots in certain parts of the supply chain. And it seems that no matter what a video game publisher could do, highly anticipated games do tend to get leaked out by retailers ahead of schedule.

It happened for Halo 3. It happened for Grand Theft Auto 4. And just as misfortune would have it, Metal Gear Solid 4 was also leaked early.

When it was reported last week that Solid Snake was making his stealth rounds a few days earlier than scheduled, Konami responded that it wasn’t possible. They said that they “pride [themselves] on working closely with retailers,” having asked major retailers to sign written agreements to keep the scheduled release date of MGS4 sacred.

Despite the written agreement system, broken street dates still went by unimpeded with more copies (PS3-MGS4 bundles, even) of Guns of the Patriots leaking out of retail outlets prior to June 12. And if you’ve seen QuickPeek 50’s Comment of the Week, DNAgent did pose a valid argument about the non-major retailers that Konami missed out on.

Konami issued a statement yet again, somewhat recanting their previous one from last week, admitting that there are indeed blind spots in the supply chain:

Unfortunately, these things happen. As much as we like [to] see that no one breaks streets dates, no one can monitor every single moment that a title gets packed up for shipment and when [it’s] on its way to the stores. The store could be at fault as well, for letting someone get a copy before the street date.

Well, you know what the Jedi say… Sith happens.