The beleaguered beta for Metal Gear Online has been given a new, though tentative, start date.

Due to begin yesterday (21st April), the beta is now scheduled to kick off at midnight (Pacific Time) on Friday, April 25th - that's 8:00am on Saturday 26th over here.

This date remains subject to change, however. The Metal Gear Online teaser site tells us, "While the start is planned for the weekend, it may change due to unforeseen circumstances."

The beta has been a bit of a disaster, so far. Players who'd downloaded and installed the beta, launched on the "new" PlayStation store on Thursday, were greeted with a message to download the 1.01 patch. Patch downloaded and installed, players were informed that they'd need a Konami "Game ID" - and were forwarded to a sign-up website that was paint-dryingly slow.

After all that, excitement mounting for the beta to begin, the service was postponed due to huge demand overloading the game's servers. Who would have expected such massive demand for a highly anticipated release? Not Konami, apparently.

It's not all bad news, though - Brandon Laurino of Konami Online says on the PlayStation Blog, "To compensate for the delay, the MGO Beta period has been extended a week, now ending on May 11th."

He goes on to dish out a word to the wise, telling us, "Please note that your MGO Beta UPVCs (Unique Product Voucher Codes) will only be valid up until May 5th 2008, so please make sure to register them by then."

The delay was caused by large volumes of traffic destabilising the servers, but we're told that the MGO team in Japan is working "round the clock" to rectify the situation.

^{Sources: MGO Teaser Site, PlayStation Blog,}