Summary
After months of swirling rumours about a possibleRed Dead Redemptionremaster,Rockstar has announced that we’re getting… a port. A PS4 and Nintendo Switch port, to be precise, which will release digitally on August 17 and physically on October 13. The Nintendo eShop price lists the game as $49.99, and the PS4 version will presumably cost the same, but the PlayStation store doesn’t list the price as of right now.
The ports will be bundled with the Undead Nightmare DLC and will have “bonus content from the Game of the Year edition”. In comparison, the Xbox version of Red Dead Redemption with Undead Nightmare will cost $39.98, though it doesn’t include the extra content found in the Game of the Year edition. The Xbox version also runs at a 4K resolution and has multiplayer thanks to it taking advantage of backward compatibility – the ports seem to have no visual upgrades and no multiplayer support.
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Understandably,fans are upset. Firstly, they’re mad that there still isn’t a PC port for the game, even though it’s 13 years old and, as of this month, will be on every popular video gaming platform bar PC. And the ports wearegetting have basically no improvements to them and are likely locked at the original game’s 30fps – that’s understandable when it comes to the Switch, as it doesn’t have the hardware to run graphically intense games with high specs, but really sucks for PlayStation players who will have to play an inferior version of the game in comparison to Xbox’s cheaper backwards compatible version.
The price is also a huge point of contention. $50 for a port of a game that came out 13 years ago for an outdated console seems high, to say the least. If it had been a remaster, I would’ve been tempted to pick it up, but a straight port that’s inferior to existing versions on other platforms and has barely been updated isn’t worth the money Rockstar is asking for, and the fans agree. The comment section on the announcement video on YouTube is almost entirely flooded with “You never fail to disappoint, Rockstar”, or some variation on it.
To be fair, we don’t know for a fact that the ports will lack improved graphical fidelity or be locked at 30fps. The announcement video doesn’t say anything about improvements made or not made, and for all we know they’ll announce this at a later date. I have serious doubts that there have been any updates just from looking at the trailer, but there’s a non-zero chance that this will happen, and it would look a lot better for Rockstar.
It’s also worth noting that a lot of the vitriol is because of the rumours that we would be getting a full remaster, and disappointment that these rumours weren’t true, which isn’t really the fault of Rockstar. This classic game coming to more platforms is a good thing, but it’s also true that charging players $50 for an inferior version of a 13 year old game sucks. It’s hard to argue against the criticisms of this port, and for once, I’m agreeing with angry video game Twitter – this game costs way too much for what it is.
