Yet another remaster was announced, Xenoblade Chronicles X is one of the last Wii U games that hasn't been ported to the Switch with the exception of the Wind Waker and Twilight Princess and the very rare game like Mario Party 8 which was a terrible game yet has received several better sequels on the Switch or Tank! Tank! Tank!, the tech demo launch title Nintendo Land. and all those shovelware games Nintendo pushed onto the Wii U in the last two years of its life like Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival that is hardly even a game.
Nintendo basically said fuck you to anyone who ever supported the Wii U, and all because of their failure to popularize the console with practically nothing but a tech demo to sell the console for months and the worst drip feed of worthwhile games we've seen outside of the Vita. Passing the loss of the failed console onto everyone who supported them, thanks Nintendo, if you're not screwing us by lying to us about never having an XL version of your handheld so that we buy into the original model only to announce thee XL literally a week later instead of a couple years after that quote, you're phoning it in within two years of the life of a console that you released while you push to have a new one released ASAP, the Switch was released four years after the Wii U, but that doesn't mean that we got four years out of the Wii U as a console with the last two years having almost no releases but shovelware from Nintendo themselves. Now with all the worthwhile games on the Switch, the Wii U and the entire library of anyone who owns the Wii U, is basically meaningless. Unless you've got someone like me who sees value using the Wii U as the ultimate Nintendo emulator because of the Wii U pad and the TV being true dual screen support for DS emulation, it is by far Nintendo's worst console. It has literally no identity of its own as it lost all of that when everything worthwhile no longer exists as an exclusive.
That's another reason I dislike ports and remasters, because they take away the identity of a past console. If there's no reason to ever own that past console because it now no longer has any exclusives at all, much like the PS5, Xbox Series X, Wii U, and Vita, the console is literally worthless, a meaningless piece of scrap not worth the plastic and electronics used to make it. Some ports are fine, not a big deal, but each and every port that's released takes a little piece away from the previous console and it adds nothing to the new consoles other than games we've already played before, no new experiences. Yes, there are millions of people that didn't have the opportunity to play those games, but most gamers now days that play these games have aged alongside the consoles. The average age of console gamers is apparently in the 30s, not the 20s like they were a decade ago. So all of these people have already had the opportunity to play these games. Not only does it take away from the history of past consoles, it adds games that others have already played, the people who have played these don't get anything out of the release if they're not interested in paying for another remaster. Again, not so bad when it's a few here and there, but when it's large quantity of the games released?
So tell me then, how is it that Sony's studios haven't released anything this entire generation if it takes such a skeleton crew? Naughty Dog released three new games, a remastered collection of the PS3 Uncharted games, and TLOU remastered. So far after four years of the PS5, their TWO TEAMS have released The Last of Us Part 1 remastered, a graphical update of the exact same game, The Last of Us Part 2 remaster, and the remaster of the two Uncharted games on PS4. So four remasters with not a single new game. It's been seven years since the second team released a new game and five years since the first team released a new game. It's not really that much of a skeleton crew if it's been half a decade or more for two giant us teams to even show off a new game that's in development. The only one that has high resolution textures has been The Last of Us Part 1, all of the other games was that "simple remaster" that you're talking about.To begin with, the average port or remaster requires a tiny fraction of the time and budget of a brand-new game. There are a lot of them because they're relatively quick and cheap to make. They're not eating up the resources necessary to create a brand-new game. Even remakes can run the gamut, with some being quite low-budget (such as the 3D remake of Secret of Mana). If a company is refraining from making brand-new games, then they just don't want to take the risk. The cost to make games has grown exponentially, and it doesn't always pay off.
Sucker Punch developed Infamous Second Son, used a lot of the same content to develop the expansion Infamous First Light, and Ghost of Tsushima. This generation they've onlly released a remaster for Ghost of Tsushima and in five years are going to have released their one and only PS5 non remaster. So last generation they've released two games if you don't count the expansion, this generation they'll have released one. Unless they can release another game within two years, that's it. One remaster, and one game. They'll probably release an expansion based on Ghost of Yotei, but they'll be in the same boat they are last gen with the release of First Light, except they'll be one full game down.
Sony Santa Monica has so far released one cross generation game on the PS5, God of War Ragnarok. So last generation there's been two games. God of War and God of War Ragnarok, this generation there's pretty much been one remaster since the game was in development for PS5 before they decided to push more resources into making it cross gen. Remember when Sony said that the game was only going to be on PS4 at one point. So yeah, it's a remaster, that's it, it's not a PS5 game. So in four years, Sony Santa Monica has made a single remaster and hasn't even announced a single PS5 game while PS4 has had two games and one remaster with God of War 3.
You see my point right, these games are just your "simple remasters." The one game that was more than a simple remaster was The Last of Us Part 1 which were only higher fidelity graphics than a simple resolution bump with all of the same textures and effects from last generation, yet these studios have nothing to show for it aside from these remasters.
Now here's another thing to point out. Nightdive Studios, the people who remastered Star Wars Dark Forces and System Shock with upgraded graphics have a team of 40 people as of 2022. In this year they developed two remasters so at this time they likely have more people working for them. But you remember when System Shock Enhanced Edition was in development hell for a long time? 40 people releasing two games a year though? That's not a skeleton crew, that's a lot of people working to get the games out. It's definitely a third party group that was working on these games, so these games didn't cause the delay of other titles, but the fact that it took a studio of 40 people such a long time to develop a remaster, it just goes to show it's not just a few people in their basement slapping a remaster to thagether in a few days because that's just how easy it is. You hear this shit all the fucking time that oh, remasters are just a few people, it doesn't take any resources, it's just a small fraction of how many people developed the original game.
Here's some more information. The original System Shock was developed by Looking Glass Studios in 1994. They had 120 employees as of 1999. That doesn't mean that's how many employees they had during the development of System Shock, but there are only three times the amount of employees in 1999 Nightdive Studios currently has now, and this is over 20 years after the fact. Hardware has gotten more powerful, advancement in technology has made software development easier, yet it's not that much of a substantial loss of employees from then to now and again, that's five years after the original System Shock was developed, a pretty big hit and System Shock 2 was an even bigger hit, so you likely say that the amount of employees grew after the success of the original System Shock within that five years that System Shock 2 launched in 1999, so the amount of employees may have even been 60 or 80, compared to the 40 in Nightdive Studios. It's really just speculation there, butt the fact is, it's not as simple as people are making these things out to be.
One more thing, you're an RPG fan. Have you not played any of the Pixel Remasters and have seen just how many developers worked on those games, and that's a lot more people than the original NES Final Fantasy, for just a "simple remaster." I might sound like a dick here but the amount of bullshit people are spewing out of their mouths without actually looking into it a little bit and just assuming that it's an old game so it takes no development resources and one person is just making the entire game on a weekend(I'm generalizing here but you get the idea.) It's far from what people actually think.
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