Are Developers Getting Lazy or Did the Current Generation Arrive too Early?

As someone who started gaming back when Atari was a big deal - I've owned almost every single machine to come out. It was no shock to my wife when the latest Xbox and PS4 came out that I was right there on day one money in hand to pick up the latest shiny pieces of gaming joy.

At first - my enthusiasm for the new systems was at an all time high but has since begun to wane with indifference with each new announcement boasting exciting new HD remaster/re-releases of games from the previous generation. Ya I;ll admit I was excited for the re-release of The Last of Us. It was absolutely stunning. My wife even played it (which is no small feat). Even the Halo: Master Chief Collection was a pretty exciting announcement because it's been years since I played Halo 1 or 2 but now... Now I'm just getting tired of it. It feels like every other day we're hearing about Remastered games.

So what all is behind this? Is it purely a cash grab by lazy developers looking to make a quick buck or is it simply something they can do with a fairly quick turnaround to buy themselves some time to finish work on their next releases? To me it feels a like a little of both leaning more to column b.

Let's be honest - The PS4 - as great a system it is hasn't been churning out the big exclusive hits and TLoU was something to keep us occupied until something else hit. Same goes for the Uncharted remaster. If memory serves, Uncharted 4 was scheduled for this year but when they knew it wasn't going to happen (probably early fall of 2014) they opted to hammer out the remastered collection for this year to keep us happy.

That's not to say Sony is the only culprit here. Eidos, Capcom, Gearbox, Microsoft are all guilty of this as well.

What do you guys think? Are developers being lazy and going for the easy cash grab or did the PS4 and Xbox One come out a year or 2 too early for developers to have enough time to learn the new technology and deliver a truly Next Gen experience?

[jackanderson1985]

with no backwards compatibility in the consoles (choice of the Console Makers not the devs).... by remastering fan favourites (in majority of cases) it allows devs time to get to know the system's ins and outs, lets them fund new/existing products with minimal costs and there's a whole new breed of gamers out there that have untapped potential

[3-4-5]

* They were waiting for advancements in chip technology that finally this year broke through to where they need it to be.

* This was a "stop gap" or transition Generation of gaming, and many people in the industry have been dropping hints to this from the beginning.

Nothing wrong with that, but the REAL awesomeness we thought we'd be seeing won't truly be realized until 3-6 years from now on the next consoles.

I'm still enjoying this gen for what it is, and that is a gen that corrects a lot of lats gens mistakes, and makes a few of it's own along the way.

[the_hitman3000]

It's a way for them to make easy money cause the systems are new. With that said I would say also because games are probably going to take longer to make with the new hardware boost (reason why even a cod team is on a 3 year cycle). It just helps out the publishers I'd imagine.

[s45gr32]

These consoles are nothing more than overclock tablets. There's nothing for these game developers to learn other than optimize games. PC gaming is were game developers still have a lot to learn

[the_hitman3000]

It is not about learning the systems. It's about how much detail and time goes into these advanced game. If you think stuff like Witcher 3 do not take a long time then I don't know what to tell you.

[lemoncake]

Most of these "remasters" have been nothing more than simple ports with the low res textures being replaced with high res textures, the odd tweek and some upgraded particle effects. It doesn't take a lot of work but you get good visual results just from switching those textures which they would easily have at hand for any recent last gen game. If it's a multiplat game it's even easier as they can just port over the pc version easily due to the new consoles using the same pc architecture.

I do prefer this method though as if you wait a bit you can get an improved version of a game you once really enjoyed cheap, rather than just using an emulator and nothing changes apart from the machine you are playing it on.

[s45gr32]

The systems are too damn weak, is easier to make a remastered game than a game that is buggy as hell. Let's be real is just cash grab, game developers know parallel processing, virtual cores, built in gpu through the PS3 cell processor. X86 architecture, game developers know it extremely well. ....... So game developers know the ins and outs of these systems.

[Forum_Pirate]

Yes. Every dev knows the intimate details of how to best use every aspect of a system from the word go. Because that makes perfect sense. We don't have major AAA teams screwing the pooch for major releases on every platform all the time or anything. AC unity never happened.

Ever consider that these games are 1, 2 or even 3 generations old and people don't necessarily own the old consoles but would like to experience the whole story without trying to dig up a working xbox just to play halo 2?

[Lukejrl]

to your first point about buggy games due to programmers not understanding the system, alot of them are due to time constraints and rushing the game out for a particular financial quarter.

your second point is solved by backwards compatibility. this feature can be instituted in xboxone for 360 and og xbox, and ps4 should be able to play ps1 and ps2 games emulated, with ps3 not without the cell processor which i get.

But alas the dollar these companies are making off remasters and such will never again let backwards compatibility happen.

[TWB]

Quite the opposite in my oppinion...

The reason why we are seeing so many remasters, IMO shows that these games never achieved what the developers intented on the last gen machines so they polish them up a bit more and up the basic visual stuff for the remasters.

Ofcourse there are also those who see that this is a good moment for a quick cash grab.

Last gen lasted a year or two too long. Sony even said somewhere that the time it takes for you to see some visual results with your games (I think there is a techical term for that but I cant really recall what it is) during development, dropped from 9 months (PS3) to 3 months (PS4!), which according to them is the same as it was on the PS1! Clearly if that is the case, its not that the machines are difficult at all.

[freshslicepizza]

i made the mistake of expecting games to be on time. the ps3 was a difficult platform for developers so i managed my expectations as far as getting the games out on time. the ps4 i thought would change that but here we are once again having so many games getting delayed. why are game studios so bad at getting projects done on time?

the lack of interest to now have systems backwards compatible aside from nintendo shows where their priorities now lye. both sony and microsoft lost a lot of money last generation and because of that they had to design systems that were made to be profitable early on. that's why the pc is already so far ahead technically. it's also opened up the market even more for remasters to earn easy profits.

the last generation went on far too long because they are still trying to recoup costs and game development budgets continues to rise for aaa games. i am so glad there has been a lot more renewed interest in pc gaming. because of it's open platform you have better software prices and don't have the gluttony of remasters because the hardware can be scaled pending on your investment. there is also better pricing structure instead of the console market which seems to think most games still need to be $60 or indie games. the middle market is often neglected on consoles.

[Crazay]

I actually don't think the last generation went too long. They were still able to churn out some absolutely stunning games towards the end.

Sure the PC was leaving the consoles behind in the dust but I was still happy with what was coming out. Seeing all the continual delays for the AAA titles is frustrating. No I don't want them to release something that's just a mess but it sure seems like announced release dates are merely release maybes now and these quick ports are easy to push, make some extra bank and put those resources into the new project.