Many aren't exactly happy about the fact that Konami is releasing Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes as a separate prologue from The Phantom Pain, and some are even planning to skip it and just wait for the full course, but those that do may find themselves missing out, as revealed by Director Hideo Kojima himself in an interview on Game Informer

Well, of course, you can use your save data from Ground Zeroes. If you rescue more hostages in Ground Zeroes, that will be reflected in TPP. I cannot dive into too much detail, but there will be several advantages and bonuses that people that are playing Ground Zeroes will be able to get in TPP. For an extreme example, your game records, your scores will be inherited. People will start from the same place, but despite the fact that you’re starting from scratch altogether, people that have played Ground Zeroes will have clear advantages over people that didn’t. That’s just for example, but you should see those kind of advantages. In the mission you already played, there are other hostages that are escaping. If you listen closely to the soldiers’ conversations, you will realize these hostages could be scientists or something very relevant for the future.

Personally, I plan to play the hell out of Ground Zeroes, so I'm quite happy to hear that data will carry over, even if I'm not too sure if those that plan to skip the prologue will feel the same way.

I'm actually quite curious to see if there'll be any system in place to transfer data from PS3 to PS4 and from Xbox 360 to Xbox One. Considering that The Phantom Pain will most probably be released only for next generation consoles, those that will play the prologue on the old ones may still find themselves missing out unless something like that is implemented.