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SvennoJ on 20 August 2015
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Dgc1808 said:

There was a discussion about this in another thread. Some one wanted to point out that late PC ports almost always release with presentation and visual enhancements. So should they be considered remasters? The concensus at the end was "YES". They do fit the definition because they were made after the original and improvements were made on what was already there. In vast majority of cases, "port" and "remaster" are synonyms. (And lets be honest, if TLOU wasn't a popular game we probably wouldn't be seeing the labeled 'remaster' being discussed so much... Then again, people would still be talking/complaing about 'definitve' editions XD)

Are all ports remasters though? I would argue no. The word "remaster" implies some improvement which isn't always the case. Dark Souls PC is an excellent example. Locked at 720p30, same visual and performance hits that were present on the console version. No improvements were made. Same goes with FFXIII PC, FFIV PC (port of the DS game and even has battles locked at 15fps...) Bioshock PS3 (had some bugs that result in visual downgrades compared to other versions) and some other games I just can't think of at the moment.

It happens with movies too. The early blu-ray releases were pretty bad (pre h.264, single layer mpeg-2 discs, upscaled DVD ports) and it still happens now and then. One notorious bad example is The blair witch project. http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Blair-Witch-Project-Blu-ray/13876/ They don't call them remasters though. And sometimes remasters lose some charm of the original, same with games.

When is a port a remaster? It seems the game industry likes to use the word for ports from one gen to the next. It has little to do with enhancements for better or worse. It's simply the new term for HD editions, sounds better than The last of us full HD. The term is mostly used by the press and marketing anyway, Nathan drake collection and Gears Ultimate edition, no mention of remastered in the titles there. The press doesn't know what they mean either: Gears of War remastered coming to PC, playable at 4K resolution
The remake of the original Gears of War is coming to computers
Which is it?