r/NightdiveStudios

I was just thinking about game preservation with playstation ending physical releases, how bad these big publisher are at making their games available for modern systems and consoles.

They have so many games on their library and it's just there lost taking dust, and this is specially bad in the videogames industry, the music and film business are much better they have remasters and new editions of classic albums and movies all the time (there's so many old movies that got rediscovered because they get a new 4k remaster).

These big publisher are so obcessed with live service games to get continious revenue but that could be acomplished if they threated their catalogue better, like a bunch of old games selling over time will be more lucrative than betting everything in the new shining AAA that costs 300 million dollars. I think about a company like EA, sure a new port of Dante's Inferno for modern consoles will not sell 10 million copies like the annual sports game but a bunch of these classic games being re-released will sell much better over time and create or revitilize the fandom around the IP, imagine an Ultima Collection, a james bond collection with the 2000s EA games; so much potential and they do not care.

And the thing is people will play these old games in one way or another it can be emulation, piracy or old hardware with used copies all of which the publisher gets nothing, they are literally not making free money. And if you want to see what a successful version of this is look at what capcom is doing, in the last 10 years their business model became selling their catalogue, they have remasters, ports and collections of most of their franchises (incredible how many mega man collections they made) and every time a new game is announced it generates interest in the catalogue and if one person becomes a super fan of the franchise is likelly they will buy more games. I feel like capcom cracked the code and all of these big publishers should follow.

This is a publisher thinking on long-term

We are seeing the playbook happening in real time with onimusha, it was a dead IP and they made a remaster of the first game, then the second and now is releasing a new game. It creates a virtuous cicle the old fandom playing the remaster/port/collection and wanting a new one, the new game is announced and it gets new players interested in playing the old games. The dino crisis 1 and 2 release on GOG and steam sold like 300K copies, this is as close you can get of free money.

And these big publishers like EA, Activision, Capcom, Konami, Sega has such a big catalogue that it's not possible for nightdive or any single studio to work on the catalogue of all of them so each of should have a team like nightdive or digital eclipse dedicated in re-releasing these games in collections, ports and remasters. It's minimal investiment for long term stability and continuous revenue.

... Night dive really needs to start using normal maps in their remasters. The surfaces in the trailer look a bit flat. Normal maps would add a lot of depth to them especially the stone surfaces.

What does everyone think is/are the likely Nightdive release(s) at Quakecon this year? I’m strongly thinking Hexen 2 + Heretic 2 (since they run off of the modified Q2 engine that’s already been adapted) or Quake 4 (considering this year is the 30th anniversary of the franchise). Thoughts?