Hideo Kojima is busying himself with a brand new Metal Gear game that’s bound for arcades instead of home consoles.

Metal Gear Arcade, as it is cleverly titled, is actually based on the popular Metal Gear Online game from the PS3. The coin-op game boasts several key differences to its console forebear, though – inter-arcade competition via the ‘eKonami’ system, a suitably beefy cabinet and special goggles that allow players to see all the action in three glorious dimensions. That alone should be worth a few 50ps.

Metal Gear Arcade is bound for Japanese amusement centres before the year is out, and should arrive in the pier-end fleapits of the world shortly afterwards.

In other Kojima-related news it turns out that Metal Gear Solid Rising is not an Xbox 360 exclusive after all. It’s actually destined for PC and PS3 platforms too. Guess we shouldn’t be too surprised or disappointed – big games like this cost squillions to produce, so it’s understandable that publishers should want to mitigate, so to speak. In any case, the fact that the franchise is coming to 360 at all is still a real bonus, right?

Kojima himself will be rather hands-off in the development of Rising. Instead, he’s letting his "young bloods" handle the hard work while he concentrates his efforts on the PSP game, Metal Gear: Peace Walker, which he considers to be the next “true” sequel to the franchise. Oh well...