Cognition Dissemination: Remakes Are About the Marketing Potential

It hasn’t been difficult to deduct the ostensible reasons why publishers green light video game remakes. Several popular games can withstand the test of time, yes, but parts of them can age badly. This marks a prime opportunity for a development team to remake an experience in a more modern sheen, with a resulting recreation that maintains familiarity for those with nostalgia for the original versions. They’re also great for new audiences to experience, who may not want to revisit older versions for fear that they may look or feel archaic. Remakes are also approved for marketing reasons, after publishers observe which titles the gaming audience is most willing to pay for.

Priorities, however, have shifted over time, which shouldn’t be as surprising as it is given the changes in how games are developed. The marketing potential for remakes is becoming important, as budgets continue to increase and games demand more resources — especially AAA examples. Because of this, expected remakes are now being skipped over for more popular titles in franchises, and this will only happen with increased frequency in the future.

Take Final Fantasy VII Remake for a key recent example. Chances are Square Enix didn’t even have a remake of the most popular game in the franchise in mind until the PlayStation 3 tech demo featuring part of the intro took off. They may not have considered it after that, either, thanks to the resources it would require. Remember that this was a company that could barely adapt to HD development at the time, prominently displayed through the ultra-linear and town-deprived Final Fantasy XIII. But the combination of the developers and vocal fans convinced them to go through it, albeit in an episodic form.

This has resulted in them skipping remakes for Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI, the last two mainline games released before the series took off with FFVII. Square Enix, of course, made this decision not because they can’t count, but because the marketing potential for FFVIIR was too good for them not to jump to it. It’s paid off handsomely for them, even in a pandemic-stricken time where they’ve had trouble getting copies to shelves in multiple territories. We might be lucky to get FFV and FFVI remakes if Square Enix considers the hideous-looking mobile versions to be good-enough ports, despite two prominent FF development heads, Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase, not labeling them as such.

On the other hand, the also-recent Trials of Mana shows how Square Enix is willing to create non-AAA remakes. They could go with lower-budget alternatives. But if that was true, they might have done it already. There was an over twelve-year between the Final Fantasy IV remake and FFVIIR, after all. There’s also how ToM isn’t as large as an FF game in terms of scope, and didn’t need as high a budget. FFVIIR is the only FF game that can get away with being split into episodes to mitigate the scope of each entry, and will be the only one. Don’t be surprised if they end the remakes after the FFVIIR series finishes by, let’s say, 2035 optimistically. They’ll want to save other resources for new games.

The rumored Resident Evil 4 remake will become the best example yet if it’s true. RE4, released in 2005, has aged better than other older RE games, and there are questions as to whether the modern team can recreate the solid pacing and sense of humor the original game included. Not that Capcom was concerned about that when they reportedly green lit this, a recreated version of an original game so popular that it’s guaranteed to sell to older and newer Resident Evil fans alike.

Pursuing RE4 means skipping Resident Evil Code: Veronica, the title next in line after the recently-remade Resident Evil 3. CV is a fine game, but was unpolished compared to other classic-style RE games, and Chris Redfield’s campaign felt tacked on compared to Claire’s. But this couldn’t make it clearer that publishers don’t green light remakes for games that need them; again, this is about marketing potential, and there’s much more with RE4.

For a very likely future example: A remake of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War hasn’t been announced or rumored yet. If (or, let’s be honest, when) it is, you can bet that it will receive far more resources than any previous Fire Emblem remake. It’s not just that the original Super Famicom game wasn’t localized, but this was the first title to include relationships and the option to have children, a key feature that helped Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates make FE one of Nintendo’s flagship franchises. It won’t be a lower-budget project released at the end of a system’s lifeline, like the last remake — which, funnily enough, was skipped until it was later green lit thanks to fan requests.

Marketing potential will be more important for big-budget remakes in the future than it is now, and the reactions to FFVIIR and the likely-upcoming RE4 remake suggest that some gaming types are not prepared for this to be the case. (Yes, me included; I wrote two editorials about FFV and FFVI not getting remade here.) Lower-budget alternatives like Link’s Awakening and Trails of Mana will still exist, but they won’t be high in number. It blows that the remakes principle doesn’t apply equally for games that actually need them, but that’s just how things are.

Related posts:

Cognition Dissemination: Final Fantasy XV is Out. What’s Next for Square Enix Japan? Cognition Dissemination: The Highlights from Recent Final Fantasy VII Remake Showings Cognition Dissemination: How Could Nomura Be Handling These Final Fantasy VII Remake Leaks? Cognition Dissemination: Google Stadia, and the Beginning of the Video Game Streaming Wars