Poor analogy, yes. But I don’t think I’m making a poor assesment of added cost of a PC addition to the games initial offering. They were already in a big budget. The design and test teams could be the same or nearly so. That leaves a port team for the PC, which could even include resources from say, the Xbox developers. Or the fact that your studio probably has those resources from other teams already on your payroll. Sure, there is indeed an added cost for the platform. But my whole point is, why kill off part of a potential market share when you’re on a AAA budget?
I’m not sure what the budget for Crackdown was initially, however.
EDIT: Doing some random reading, the rumor is that the code was a mess for RDR. So in that situation, a port would have been too cost prohibative to port, as the mess would have to be straightened somewhat. I’m not sure how much I believe that rumor, however, since the game ran fairly well on two other platforms.
Designing a theoretical “male-only car” would cost more than making a normal one, not less.
In RDR’s case, remember that, if reports are to be believed, the entire dev cycle for that game was apparently a living nightmare for everyone involved, with constant lack of communication (often enforced by management), unreasonable crunch on a project that had been in development for years without showing any real progress, and any real incentive to create gone once management took credit for your work. (This trend would continue in a far bigger way with LA Noire.)
Crackdown doesn’t need any goofy budget justifications or anything - it was developed as an Xbox 360 exclusive, the sequel was developed as an Xbox 360 exclusive, and the only reason the new game will be on PC as well is because Microsoft’s given up on “true” exclusives entirely, despite their competitors actively demonstrating with their multiple best-selling single-platform-exclusive games of the year in 2017 that, hey, maybe there’s still merit to this whole “exclusive” thing.
Also, as much as people here might like to forget, premium (read: not free-to-play) PC gaming is an incredibly small portion of the global PC market, and back when RDR came out, we were still in the era of “good” PC ports being something to praise rather than something to expect as the baseline. Consoles don’t have either of these problems, and mainstream games tend to do a much better job of reaching an audience on consoles than on PC.
I would love an updated take on Red Baron or Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. Fight Sims were one of my favorite genre when I first got into gaming, but it’s been a long time since I have really enjoyed one. Unfortunately, the middle-ground between absolute sim and pure arcade flight games seems to have gone extinct.
I don’t know, haven’t really thought about it. But I think different alien worlds with their own unique environments and enemies would be cool, Some asteroids and abandoned space stations and ships would be neat too. You’d also have your ship that you could upgrades - crafting/research (maybe that’s how you’d level up through research), maybe a trophy room, maybe the ship could provide additional abilities/powers - attack drones, orbital strikes, etc. Hehe, this game is sounding cooler as I go along :)
That’s the one with the weird copy protection… I think it let you play if you entered the wrong answer, it’s just you ended up with a really bad start.
I never got very far in the game, and I’d like to blame the DRM.
Starflight did that too. You could fudge the code at the beginning, but then the interstellar cops would track you down and, if you entered the code wrong again, kill your ass dead.
Just based on existing games that haven’t really been remade
A modern Bushido Blade - last seen 1998
AFAIK there hasn’t been a game like this in a million years.
Anachronox 2 - last seen 2001
Story left unfinished on a cliffhanger ending.
Dune! - last seen 2001?
Because Dune!
God Hand 2 - last seen 2006
Dreaming the impossible dream. A sequel to the best brawler/beat’em up ever produced. The only direction to go right now from God Hand is down.
SWAT 5 - last seen 2006
I always enjoyed tactical shooters like this where killing is not ideal.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 - last seen 2009
Open world FPSs like this are pretty rare. If I want this I basically have to replay Call of Pripyat.
An open world Samurai RPG with Bushido Blade combat would be awesome. Or a modern remake of that old Microprose game Samurai.
A new Colony Wars. I wouldn’t even mind just a remake of the first game, it would be freaking gorgeous on a current console. Also, G-Police.
Alpha Protocol Remake/Remaster Only messed around with AP for a couple of hours but was turned off (like many) by the combat and general clunkiness and glitches. But after reading many positive opinions over the years about how it put the ROLE PLAYING in RPG, and seeing the potential myself with the few hours I spent with it, I plan on going back to at some point. If Obsidian got the resources to remake this for current gen consoles and were given the time to polish the crap out of it, it would be a day one purchase for me.
