With this current generation of games consoles and PCs we have seen a huge percentage of releases as remakes or remasters of older existing titles. In fact in 2023 90% of the highest rated games were remakes or remasters.

Obviously remasters makes sense with the PS5 and Xbox Series X because they opened up gaming to 4k, meaning games from the last 2 generations could be remastered to take advatage of it, and also due to the more powerful hardware add higher resolution textures, lighting and particle effects, and fix anything that was limited by older hardware.

On the PS5 some of the PS5 updated versions are noticeably much nicer looking. Ghost of Tsushima f.ex. looks gorgeous on the PS5 and you really do notice the difference. But that wasn't a free upgrade. If you already owned the Director's cut of the PS4 version you had to pay £9 to get the PS5 version. They obviously put a bit more work into the game than just add 4K support and up the texture resolution, but when you have already recently paid for a game should we be expected to pay again for what is still a minor update? Something that on the PC is just a patch to support newer GPUs. And taking the same game as an example, if you didn't own the Director's cut, to upgrade the standard game to the PS5 version cost £29.99. So basically a mid priced full release cost.

Other games such as No Man's Sky show the completely opposite approach. But rather than remastering the original it's developer has just been constantly working on that game for the past 7 years. The game we have today is far removed from the broken one we originally got, and each yearly major update adds a huge amount of new content, not to mention major upgrades to the game engine such as a whole new planetary weather system a couple of years ago. And this costs nothing. If you purchased the game 7 years ago you still got all of the updates free. Probably the most devoted developer of any project to date and one of the best value for money.

Should we be paying for updates and remasters for games we already own? I think it depends on the game if the game and the amount of work that has gone into the remaster. But it's also great customer service to often cheap or free remasters over having to pay again.

No Man's Sky could easily have released each of their big updates as a DLC. But I think they didn't because they wanted the game everyone was playing to be at the same version. This makes sense for bug fixing the continue development.

The same is true for Minecraft. You can buy the game for as little as £6.95 and enjoy yearly big updates for free. But that game model is a bit different because they make money from their marketplace with paid maps and skins. So similar to the DLC model.

Anyway I digress. Should remasters be free? Why should we pay twice? If they are remastering a PS3 game to run on the PS5 then OK. A good extreme example of this is Last of US. Originally released on the PS3, it saw remasters on the PS4, then the PS5. But these were paid. But they then fully remake the game, meaning to get the best version you had to pay again. That's a huge cash in on single game.

Another is GTA5. That jussi keeps getting rerelases on every playform for each generation. That has to be the worst example of cashing in.

Remakes are a bit different as they are fully remaking the games from the ground up. So for these I would always expect to pay again. But how long should thy wait to remake something?

An example of a great remake (if you are a fan) is Final Fantasy 7. This was originally released in 1997, so is now shockingly 26 years old! The first installment of the remake was released in 2020 (already 4 years ago!) 23 years after the original. This really highlighted how far hardware technology has advanced in a quarty of a century. The remake of part 1 was great but they are again really cashing in of this game by splitting it into 3 parts. Give this does give them the chance to expand more characters stories and events.

Part 2 is just released and ia huge. Far larger than that section of the original, estimated to take 170 hours to complete everything. That is just mad and if you did do that is amazing value for money. But many are already saying thy size has made it a bit boring in places. I've yet to play it, but I am liking forward to finding out. I still don't like the realtime combat though.

So what are your thoughts on remasters and remakes?
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