What’s old is new again, apparently, in 2024. Looking back at what’s been released and looking forward to what’s coming out, you’ll spot a flood of video game remakes and remasters this year. It seems that as games get more and more expensive to develop, take longer and longer to make, and become riskier to produce, the video game industry is fully embracing a safer strategy: Reheat leftovers people already like and instead, sell them that stuff.
2024 isn’t the first year in which there have been multiple remakes and remasters, of course. 2023 and 2022 and other years past have had their fair share of re-released games, too. But this year, it does feel like the floodgates have fully opened up and the industry is just drowning in remakes or remasters of popular games. I mean, thus far in 2024 we’ve already seen three different classic Star Wars games—Battlefront, Battlefront II, and Dark Forces—get remastered and released on consoles and PC within the span of a few weeks.
All the video game remakes/remasters in 2024
Ignoring previously launched remasters or remakes just being ported to new platforms, I count nearly 30 remastered or remade games released already or planned to be launched in 2024.
Here’s the list of all the remakes or remasters in 2024:
- The Last of Us Part II Remastered – Jan 19
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy – Jan 25
- Hitman Blood Money – Reprisal – Jan 25
- Persona 3 Reload – Feb 2
- Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered – Feb 14
- Mario vs Donkey Kong – Feb 16
- Brothers A Tale of Two Sons Remake – Feb 28
- Star Wars Dark Forces Remaster – Feb 28
- STALKER: Legends of the Zone Trilogy – March 6
- Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection – March 14
- Gigantic – April 9
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants – April 23
- El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron HD Remaster – April 28
- Braid: Anniversary Edition — April 30
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door – May 23
- Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD – June 27
- Age of Mythology – 2024
- Beyond Good and Evil 20th Anniversary – 2024
- Epic Mickey Rebrushed – 2024
- Gothic remake – 2024
- Lollipop Chainsaw Repop – 2024
- Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater – 2024
- Riven remake – 2024
- Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland – 2024
- Shadows of the Damned Hella Remastered – 2024
- Silent Hill 2 remake – 2024
- Sonic Generations X Shadow -2024
- Until Dawn remaster – 2024
I might have missed a few, but even still, that’s over 30 remasters or remakes in one year. That’s basically one every other week. And that’s not counting the collections that contain more than one game—like Tomb Raider I-III–-which would inflate this number even more.
Why the industry is remaking everything
And look, I understand why we are getting so many re-released games. Games are arduous and expensive to make, and many of them can’t compete with the five or six live-service hits that suck up all the oxygen in the room. It makes sense that the industry would—like Hollywood has for decades now—look backward and pull out hits and beloved classics from the past, remaking and repackaging them for new audiences. It’s not only because these remasters and remakes are often cheaper and faster to produce, but they seem less risky to investors and the people at the top of the corporate ladder.
“People already loved Tomb Raider. Clean it up, add some new features, and sell it to them again!” is probably the type of executive planning happening at many studios and publishers right now.
I don’t begrudge anyone who works on these remasters or remakes. I also think remasters and remakes can be worthwhile endeavors of their own and worth playing. However, as we’ve pointed out before, when people are working on remasters or remakes, that means they aren’t getting a chance to do something new. And that’s a bummer. It’s also a shame that so many people seem more willing to spend money on remasters than brand-new games. But as game prices keep going up, I guess it’s harder and harder to justify spending $70 on something new and different when a thing you loved is now back and costs half as much.
Ultimately, remasters and remakes flooding the market is probably something we should get used to moving forward. Games are only going to get pricer and bigger. Risks are costly. So instead, here’s Lollipop Chainsaw again.
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