{"id":1352,"date":"2011-07-15T19:05:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-15T18:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/?p=1352"},"modified":"2011-07-15T19:05:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-15T18:05:00","slug":"why-no-special-editionsof-classic-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2011\/07\/15\/why-no-special-editionsof-classic-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Why no ‘special editions’of classic games?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know that there are a lot of games companies that release sequels which, we all shout and complain, are just a re-hash of the previous game, but I wonder if they aren’t missing a bit of a trick here.<\/p>\n

Everyone moans that TIE fighter was awesome and we don’t get a sequel. Ditto syndicate. Ditto all sorts of games. I always enjoyed Age Of Empires II.\u00a0 Also Thief 2.<\/p>\n

The problem is, big companies are obsessed with re-doing EVERYTHING and then charging full price as a sequel. I suspect there is a mid-market opportunity.<\/p>\n

Lets say lucasarts took TIE Fighter, redid all the textures so they were higher res, re-did the models to be higher poly, and made the game play nice under directx9 on windows 64 bit etc, then re-released the game as a special edition for $10. Would people buy it? Would it pay for the art costs of doing so? I strongly suspect it would.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The trouble is, the big huge mega corps that control those old classics are simply not wired internally to do this. They either spend $10,000,000 on a game and expect a $100,000,000 return, or they do nothing. The fact that they have some old IP and an old (but classic) game design, where they could spend $200,000 to make $600,000 just doesn’t compute. It doesn’t fit their plan, marketing, financial or otherwise.<\/p>\n

I’d like to think some canny executive at those companies could see that if they just sold the rights to re-release an updated, re-skinned TIE-fighter\/Thief\/insertnamehere, they could make a nice easy chunk of change, but I won’t hold my breath,<\/p>\n

Bad idea? Good idea?<\/p>\n

(I know GOG games make old stuff run on modern operating systems, but they don’t update the graphics in the way I suggest).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know that there are a lot of games companies that release sequels which, we all shout and complain, are just a re-hash of the previous game, but I wonder if they aren’t missing a bit of a trick here. Everyone moans that TIE fighter was awesome and we don’t get a sequel. Ditto syndicate.<\/p>\n

Continue Reading… Why no ‘special editions’of classic games?<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1354,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions\/1354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}