MB Coins For MGS V: The Phantom Pain Are Too Expensive

Ever since Bethesda Game Studios thought it was a cool idea to create and sell armor for a horse as paid DLC, video games have taken on some weird, interesting and downright disgusting iterations. For the most part, the Metal Gear Solid series was lucky enough to avoid them, with Hideo Kojima bringing tens of hours of gameplay with as little expense to the consumer as possible. Now that he’s on the outs with Konami, and as the publisher shifts the angle of their sales output towards ruining the core gamer’s favorite IP’s, we’re starting to see some heinous nanotransactions seep into Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Last week, it was discovered that Mother Base Coins, or MB Coins for short, would be required in order to expand your forward operating bases (FOBs) and expand your totally optional PvP gameplay. Konami confirmed that they give the first taste for free, while further purchases could be made with real-life purchases or by unlocking them in gameplay. No reviewer had access to these FOBs, nor MB Coins, and could not relay how much they cost. Metal Gear Network has confirmed their prices when spotting them on the PSN page for The Phantom Pain, and they cost way too much.

Courtesy Metal Gear Network.

As you can see above, you can spend anywhere between $1.65 USD to $79.95 USD for 100 – 6,000 MB Coins in The Phantom Pain at once. To provide proper context, depending on your location, it can cost up to 1,700 MB Coins to construct a new FOB beyond the initial freebie, which inexplicably cannot be purchased with one set of purchases. You must either spend $48.95 to be able to afford two additional FOBs, or combine two packs to only spend $24 to build one more.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is a massive game. With 50 main missions and a ton of side-ops to complete, there is so much content at hand that online PvP in this manner is not necessary to the experience. Hell, Metal Gear Online is coming about a month after the single-player game’s launch on consoles, bringing a deeper competitive multiplayer experience at no extra cost (for now).

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Still, there is no excuse for releasing a game at full retail price and offering options to pay an extra 133% in one sitting. It’s a move made to make whales out of a new demographic of console gamers; a demographic once exclusive purely to F2P mobile users. The problem, here, is that Konami already has your money. There’s no need to artificially restrict content, make earning MB Coins naturally slow and incentivize paying to speed up the process. It’s a move to pinch every penny left from what is likely the last large gathering of fans for a Metal Gear Solid game before they lose Kojima to the ether of better-managed companies.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is coming out tomorrow for PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS3 and Xbox 360.

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