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.

Or you know, just keep releasing remakes so that the people who didn't get the chance to play it the first time around actually get to do so without buying another console.

And they could do that in a much more consumer friendly way. 

Just because a game took less time and resources to make doesn't mean it should be priced much lower, or are you saying that price spent on a games production should reflect the retail value directly?

Have fun whining over gtav releasing at $400 then.

*sigh* No that's not what I'm saying.  I already said clearly what I thought on that matter.  "Like I said, if the amount of resources used up for a remaster is so small, then consumers are being vastly overcharged for them. Of course, it's not an exact science, but the amount of resources invested in a game should have some bearing on its price."  That's what I said on the matter.  If you're going to argue with me, at least read what I said. 

Believe it or not, games companies aren't here to entertain you, theyre here to make money. If a company re-releases an old game and makes some money on it, then they earn a profit, profit that keeps the company going and allows them to take risks.in the future on new IP's and having larger budgets for future games, so even if you think "they're ripping people off" what would you rather have. A company that re-release a game for $5 and go out of business a year later (and all games in development get scrapped) or a company that re-releases, makes.some nice bank from people who bought it (regardless of their reasons to) and kept the cpany afloat?

How dare a company even think about doing something profitable?? What disgusting behavior.

So wait... anything a company does is fine as long as it makes a profit?  Oh boy.  This attitude is what brings us such lovely things as the season pass, games broken at launch, disc locked DLC, and all that lovely stuff.  Obviously they want to make money, but they should be required to do so while also offering a good value to their customers.

As for "what I would rather have" you've prevented a very ridiculous scenario.  First off, I'd rather have them use the programmers and resources towards new game.  But, if they must do a remaster, why are $5 dollars and full price the only possibilities?  Why not release it at something like $30, and give it some bonus content or meaningful changes to the gameplay?  That would be a fair price for people who haven't played the game, and would give those who haven't played it more incentive to try it.

In the end, you don't get it because you don't *want* to get it. You have a set opinion on the matter and that's that, millions disagree, and as it happens those millions are the ones buying remasters, so the practice will continue.

Ok.  And I think that practice sucks.  I'm not sure what your point is.  People have different opinions.  That doesn't invalidate mine.

And last but not least, remastering a game doesn't devalue the original game, sure it cost less to remaster than to make the original, but the company still had to make the original to begin with, so the remaster actually took the original effort and the remastering effort to make.

That's a fair point.  I'll have to consider that.

I see this a lot everywhere but I'm actually wondering how many first party remasters has Sony actually done on their PS4? Considering it's getting quite the name for having remastered games so far I can only think of:

The Last of Us
God of War 3
Uncharted Collection

And only one of those actually is out, and it came out last year?

This is a genuine question so please enlighten me :)

Why advance something like this without even the slightest bit of corroboration?  I look at all of Sony's first party studios, all of which are working, some even with multiple projects, and I wonder what you're talking about.  I look at all the second-party studio projects Sony is funding and wonder what you're talking about.  I look at remasters being done by contractors that specialize in remasters and I wonder what you're talking about.

This is just really basic common sense stuff.  If a team is working on a remaster, then that time is not spent on new content.  I'm not sure how you could get around this as a basic point of logic.  If you took the people who are working on remasters, and put them instead towards creating new content, you'd have more new content.  Yes?

There are a ton of announced and unannounced games in the channel that we know about.  They aren't out yet?  That's because making games takes a long time, especially with new hardware and new tools, and Sony did support the PS3 until the end.  They'll be ready when they're ready.

Sure.  And when they're ready, people will probably not complain as much.  But, right now, the amount of great new experiences is extremely low while the amount of last gen rehashings is extraordinarily high. 

As far as anti-consumer goes, wait a little while and they'll be under twenty dollars.  Remastering a game might require a fraction of the money needed to create a new game from scratch but they did invest resources and obviously they expect a return; no one should be surprised that it costs more than an older version with copies already shipped and sitting in retailer warehousing.  Nintendo games, on the other hand, will still be close to full price years after release but I seldom see people complain about that.  Isn't Skyward Sword still retailing for $50 much worse for consumers?  The Uncharted Collection is only $10 more now and will probably sell for less within a year's time.

I'm not sure where Nintendo games came into this, so I'm not going to veer off topic.  While nobody should be surprised more that a remaster costs more than the original title, it's a question of how much more, and what content is added.  For exampe, there are remasters like the Kirby Superstar Ultra, Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition, The Orange Box, or The Master Chief Collection which offer a good value.  These games made significant visual changes, added a significant amount of content, or bundled a large amount of content.  Then there are games like Tomb Raider Bouncy Hair, The Last Of Us Remastered, Ultimate Street Fighter IV Input Lag Edition, the NES remakes on the GBA, and so on that offer a crappy value.  Sure you can wait, but there's really no reason for them to charge full price in the first place.

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