Releasing Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes ahead of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was not the original plan, according to director Hideo Kojima.

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"Ideally," Kojima told IGN. "I would have wanted to release the prologue and the main game together, at the same time."So why didn't he?Due to the enormous size of The Phantom Pain, MGS5 would never have made the launch of next-gen consoles -- specifically the PlayStation 4 -- in Japan. "It was impossible for us to have it ready by the time the next-generation platforms launched," said Kojima. "I felt that a lot of people would want a Japanese high-end game. So it wasn’t necessarily a strategic move where we thought too much about it."Selling Ground Zeroes in March 2013, and continuing development of The Phantom Pain, "is a position we took on to give people a taste of what we’re working on…this wasn’t the plan all along."Look for IGN's review of MGS5: Ground Zeroes soon.

Mitch Dyer is an associate editor at IGN. He's trying to read 50 books in 2014. These are the 50 . Talk to Mitch about books and other stuff on Twitter at @MitchyD