New Metal Gear Solid game coming to iPhone?

Spong has picked up on a cryptic teaser picture on Konami's Japanese website regarding "a next Metal Gear" game.

The picture (below) shows the mock-equation: i + ! = (power button symbol). To be honest, the green highlighting and the power button imagery suggests more of a console/Xbox 360 insinuation, though Apple has pretty much trademarked the lowercase letter 'i' these days.

Also, taking into account the use of an exclamation mark in the title of Metal Gear Ac!d suggests closer ties to a handheld game, but it's still a difficult one to call.

It'll all undoubtedly come clear in the next six to 12 months (so we won't lose too much sleep over it just yet), but it's an interesting throught that the iPhone could be the recipient of its own branch in such a big name franchise.

But it's not entirely shocking, either – console game publishers are hardly ignorant of the success iPhone is enjoying. In fact, a couple have let told us (off the record) that they've got iPhone plans in the pipeline.

Anyway, here's the original page so you can ponder over it yourself.