One Final Fantasy X PS4, please! When do you re-purchase a game?
A common lament circled around the Joystiq crew this week, echoing from staffer to staffer like a particularly winsome bird call: "Great! Now I'm going to buy Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster again!" Roughly one year after Square-Enix brought Yoshinori Kitase's freaky love-and-water-basketball story to PlayStation 3 and PS Vita, the package is making the jump to PlayStation 4. Sure it's got "system exclusive" features, but realistically this is the exact same package that came out in 2013. Excusing the thorough and comely graphical makeover, they're also pretty much the exact same games some of us already have for our perfectly functional PlayStation 2s.
This impulse is all part of the plan, of course. Game makers want games on as many platforms as possible to maximize their potential audience, but they also know that their most devoted fans will repeatedly return to the well. Square-Enix happens to be notorious for re-releasing and remaking its games - Final Fantasy IV has been re-released nine times since first coming out not counting digital re-releases of that SNES original - but they're hardly alone in the practice.
The question is: Why do we do it? Sometimes a remaster or re-release represents a significant upgrade or a move to portability, a la The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. Other times, though, it's just the same game on a different machine. Let's pick this one apart together. Take our poll and discuss in the comments.
[Images: Square-Enix]
