Too bad it’s Solid Snake and not Solid Gold. Zing! Okay, I’m sorry, that was awful. Let’s just put that behind us and get to the real story.

Rueters reports: Ryan Payton, productions producer behind upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4 title says it needs to sell over a million copies on the first day it goes on sale due to its costly production, but that may be a tough mark to hit given sluggish PS3 sales.

A year after its release, only two PS3 games have sold more than 1 million copies, a benchmark of financial success for a big-budget game. The 7-year-old PlayStation 2 had nearly 100 games sell more than a million copies in it’s lifetime.

As of October Sony has only sold around 2 million Playstation 3’s in the United States. Even if those sales doubled before MGS4 comes out, that would mean 1 in every 4 people that owns a PS3 would have to buy Metal Gear on release day. That’s higher numbers than even Halo 3 for 360. And Halo has a much broader audience.

Boom!