Remasters and remakes have become quite big business over the last decade. Between rising costs of original titles making a remaster more appealing, to players now getting older and having more attachment to nostalgia of games of the past. One major company’s CEO also looks at that, and says they aren’t interested in doing things quick and simple.
At the Morgan Stanley Technology and as transcribed by VGC, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked about remasters and how they will play into his business, specifically if he saw them as a bigger part of their strategy going forward. He said that they were not a bigger part, instead he looked at remakes as always part of the overall marketing and developing strategy the company has employed. He also went on to say that he wasn’t interested in quick and simple ports, thinking it better to take the time to do them as good as possible.
“I’m not sure there’ll be a bigger part of the strategy,” he responded. “Remastering has always been a part of the strategy. We’ve done differently than the competition – we don’t just port titles over, we actually take the time to do the very best job we can making the title different for the new release, for the new technology that we’re launching it on.
“So, we improve the technology, we upgrade the visuals, and we make performance enhancements. And that’s why I think our remastered titles typically do so well.”
The latest games in this vein the company released was Mafia: Definitive Edition, which was more of a full up and down remake, and Mafia 2: Definitive Edition, which was a more traditional remastering.
