Hey, guess what? Today is a day that ends in “y” -- and coincidentally, here’s another rumor that Metal Gear Solid 4 is making its way to the Xbox 360! This one seems at once more concrete, and yet more circumstantial, than anything we’ve had so far. The header image was screencapped from this Web site, which is a simple Flash placeholder that’s linked from Kojima Productions’ English page (see upper right). The site merely rotates between the above image and Konami’s logo.

Destructoid tipster extraordinaire Joe Burling and I have been brainstorming for the past half hour about what exactly this could mean, because it’s important to note that -- of course -- this confirms nothing. Sure, the image is in neon green, which instantly brings the Xbox 360’s ring of light to mind ... but if you think about it, that symbol is recognized worldwide as a power or on/off sign (after all, the PS3’s power button looks like this). After racking our brains and considering the facts, we’ve come up with a few observations and notes.

Both the URL of the Flash site itself, and the URL of the linking image, feature the phrase/initialism “MGST” -- though we’re pretty much stumped as to what that could mean. Joe instantly thought of “Metal Gear Solid: Tactics,” which could suggest: (A) an entirely new game in the franchise, (B) simply an altered name for the 360 version, and/or (C) the “special edition” of MGS 4 that we all guessed was coming after Substance and Subsistence. Another interesting thing to note is that MGS 4 came out on June 12, 2008, and today (December 5) is exactly one week before the six-month anniversary of the release.

In addition, Konami’s stock has been flagging of late, so Joe speculated that this could be the precursor to some sort of announcement to try and reverse that trend. Still, the iconography here must be of some significance -- exclamation points appear above soldiers’ heads in the games when they’ve spotted you, but why are two of them inverted here? Orcist wasn’t so quick to jump to the obvious conclusion (i.e., that MGS 4 is coming to the 360), saying that he figured Kojima would have something more mysterious up his sleeve in this age of viral marketing and alternate reality games. So hit the comments, Dtoiders, and help us out with your thoughts on what “a next Metal Gear is...”!