Well most of the comments here don’t have an insight into this. The reason they don’t re-release video games or old movies is because they don’t want you enjoying old things. It’s capitalism, but it’s not arbitrary like the scarcity. Because it’s not just video games, no company wants to re-release anything. Not a tractor, not a movie, not a dishwasher, nothing.
Why? Because then you don’t buy the new thing with higher margins. Then you don’t watch the new movie and they can’t sell the new ads with the new character designs promoting it. Or you don’t get locked in to their new cartridge system. Or subscription plan. Whatever. The song is different, the story is the same, new stuff make line go up faster. With tons of waste involved as well.
The reason they don’t re-release video games or old movies is because they don’t want you enjoying old things.
You’re assuming nefarious intent. I suspect the reality is that it’s not worth the rights holders’ time or money to invest in re-releasing old titles that very few people would buy.
Yeah, im going with this one. Even if it takes a company a total of 5 hours work to wrap an old game in an emulator and release it on steam, it’s not going to be worth it when only 5 people buy it.
I think one of the exceptions to this is music. Of course there’s top 40 and whatnot, but it’s one of the areas where older hits either don’t go away, or get repackaged algorithmically into let’s say “stuff from that decade you like that you’ve never heard before.”
Of course it’s still being selected from a much larger sample. But I think there’s something different about music.
I think music gets treated differently in this way partly because the fidelity 50 years ago was already very acceptable compared to the fidelity of brand new music, meanwhile you compare any other media and there’s significant improvements in the graphical fidelity that even movies from within this century can be poor enough video quality to degrade the experience compared to a new release
Well most of the comments here don’t have an insight into this. The reason they don’t re-release video games or old movies is because they don’t want you enjoying old things. It’s capitalism, but it’s not arbitrary like the scarcity. Because it’s not just video games, no company wants to re-release anything. Not a tractor, not a movie, not a dishwasher, nothing.
Why? Because then you don’t buy the new thing with higher margins. Then you don’t watch the new movie and they can’t sell the new ads with the new character designs promoting it. Or you don’t get locked in to their new cartridge system. Or subscription plan. Whatever. The song is different, the story is the same, new stuff make line go up faster. With tons of waste involved as well.
You’re assuming nefarious intent. I suspect the reality is that it’s not worth the rights holders’ time or money to invest in re-releasing old titles that very few people would buy.
Yeah, im going with this one. Even if it takes a company a total of 5 hours work to wrap an old game in an emulator and release it on steam, it’s not going to be worth it when only 5 people buy it.
I think one of the exceptions to this is music. Of course there’s top 40 and whatnot, but it’s one of the areas where older hits either don’t go away, or get repackaged algorithmically into let’s say “stuff from that decade you like that you’ve never heard before.”
Of course it’s still being selected from a much larger sample. But I think there’s something different about music.
I think music gets treated differently in this way partly because the fidelity 50 years ago was already very acceptable compared to the fidelity of brand new music, meanwhile you compare any other media and there’s significant improvements in the graphical fidelity that even movies from within this century can be poor enough video quality to degrade the experience compared to a new release