Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition announced for Nintendo Switch

[h2ohno]

Wii U to Switch remasters get an obvious pass because no one had a Wii U and everyone has a Switch. People see giving the great games trapped on a 13 million console a chance to reach an actual audience as a good thing. Even then, Nintendo took some flack in 2018 for having too many Wii U ports and not enough new games, and the announcement that Retro Studio's first HD game would be a 2D Donkey Kong platformer was even seen as a waste of the studio's talent when it was announced despite being a brand new game and not a remake or remaster. Most years of the Switch's life, Nintendo has been seen as having enough brand-new content to balance out the rereleases, and the rereleases are seen as filling out the release schedule rather than dominating it.

Both Sony and Microsoft are heavily criticized for having little to no real exclusives, so the remakes of older games, especially games that already have 2 versions on the previous 2 generations, stand out as wasting resources and manhours that would be better spent on new products. It's one thing for Monoliftsoft, a studio that has put out 2 entirely brand new gigantic games this generation in Xenoblade 2 and 3, as well as the significant story DLC for both games, and helped on other gigantic games like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, to put out a remaster of an older game at the end of the generation.

So too with Wind Waker HD and Metroid Prime HD, with the former Nintendo announced that a brand new major Zelda game was in development at the same time they announced the Wind Waker remaster, and even made it clear how the work with Wind Waker had helped the team adapt to HD development. And Prime Remastered was likewise recognized as something to reward fans for their patience with the long development of Prime 4 and a taste of what the new game could be, not something released instead of a new game. Retro still sometimes gets criticized for how it has had no new games since 2014, but people know it has been working on something new for the last 5 years.

In contrast, Naughty Dog's last game that wasn't a port or remaster of an old game was in 2020 for the previous generation. 4 years into the current generation, everything they've released have been old games, and they still haven't announced any new games. Fans would go crazy for a new Last of Us, a new Uncharted, or a new IP, even a Jak and Daxter revival with a new game, and there's nothing but rereleased PS3 and PS4 games.