Teeqoz said:
JWeinCom said:
pokoko said:
JWeinCom said:
Remasters aren't inherently bad, but the quantity of them is ridiculous. That's not just Sony, but as a whole. The pricing model is also getting shittier. Last gen, the tendency was collections with 3 games or so, and often at a value price. One game at full price is a shitty value considering that remasters take considerably less effort. There are I believe at least 30 remastered games so far. Now, if there was also a lot of truly great next gen content available, that'd be one thing, but that hasn't been the case. The problem is less with the remasters themselves, and more about people not feeling that their console purchase has been justified yet.
Anyway, as for the original topic, you can also throw Street Fighter IV on that list, as that was a Sony developed port. On the Vita side, Borderlands and Epic Mickey 2 were done by Sony (why they wanted to port Epic Mickey 2 of all games baffles me).
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More content is better than less content and I've never seen a single argument that comes close to negating that. I don't even care what that extra content is, as long as someone, somewhere, is interested in owning and enjoying it.
Years ago, when I first bought a Kindle, many older books were not available as ebooks. The more time that passes, the more books are converted and I've never once seen anyone complain about that. Every book, period, that receives an ebook conversion, makes any ebook device better. Older content reappearing in no way, shape, or form hurts the enjoyment of someone who only wants new content.
Pricing is a separate issue. Not enough new content is a separate issue--although it's also an issue for every new console ever, so I actually have zero sympathy for someone who bought a new console and thinks games magically appear because they want them to appear. Older games being converted have nothing to do with that.
Quite frankly, what I've said all seems like common sense to me. I simply cannot wrap my head about the idea of someone saying, "stop, I want less content!"
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Here's the big difference.
If 1984 is made available on Kindle, George Orwell is not converting it. 1984 being made into an ebook does not take away time from other potential books that Orwell could be writing (obviously). The person who is doing the conversion is almost certainly not a professional author. The conversion of 1984 to Kindle in no way reduces the amount of books that will be available. No new writing is not being done so that 1984 can be "remastered". If I had to estimate the dollar amount of converting 1984 to Kindle, I'd say it would probably cost under 1000 dollars. (In fact, I'd estimate it is far far far less. I don't know how licensing works, but the actual cost of conversion would be close to 0 dollars. I'm sure a version of these books already existed on a computer, and putting them on the Kindle store probably took about one man hour).
Games are different. Remasters cost money. Maybe not a ton of money, but probably enough money to make a decent indie game. It takes programmers. While the guy who is converting 1984 to pdf most likely can't write a decent book, the team converting the Last Of Us into super duper HD most certainly can make a game. If you took the same amount of people, and the same amount of money, you could get actual games.
And that goes into the lack of games. These remasters are taking up resources that could be used to make games which justify the purchase of the console. I'm not going to argue about it, but I feel like the first year lineup for the next gen consoles is considerably worse than for the older systems. Now, of course, the money generated from the remasters could be used to invest in awesome new IPs down the line, but that hasn't shown to be the case yet.
Pricing is not a seperate issue, because it's what we see, and it's part of the reason people are complaining. I'm not complaining about a theoretical world where remakes are reasonably priced, I'm talking about the actual world where pricing is laughable. Developers are putting in considerably less work and charging signigicantly more money. That's the reality, and that's what people are complaining about.
So, here's the thing. Either
a) The remakes take very limited resources and we are being vastly overcharged for the products.
or
b) The remakes are taking up resources that could be used to create new content. So we are getting less new content.
That's why people are complaining.
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Except we shouldn't be charged for the amount of money spent on the games, we should be charged for the content we get from them. Now, if the GoW3 remaster costs 60$, then yeah, that's too much, but if it costs, say, 30$m then it really isn't a lot for what is still a AAA game, despite it being a 7th gen AAA game. Take MCC for instance, that was 60$, just like a brand new release, but look at the amount of content there, 4 games in one package. The same counts for NDC, 3 games. TLOU is special, because it released so close to this gen, that it was still a relatively new game at release, and considering it was one of the most critically acclaimed games of last gen, it's not weird it was remastered. It also cost 50 dollars, which is less than a new AAA release, even though it included all DLC. The teams here are also considerably smaller than the team required to make a brand new game.
And how do you know the money isn't being put into creating new content (or new IP, even though I don't see how that's a requirement)?
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