Take-Two Interactive, the parent company behind studios like Rockstar and publisher 2K Games, has three unannounced remasters or remakes in development.
It was easy to miss in the company's recent financial presentation – the information was at the very bottom of a slide entitled "Pipeline Details (as of 18th May, 2021)". Yet alongside confirmation of Kerbal Space Program and Grand Theft Auto 5: Expanded and Enhanced for next-gen consoles, plus a standalone version of Grand Theft Auto Online, the company also said it had "three unannounced" "new iterations of previously released titles" – remasters or remakes, in other words.
Take-Two was keen to emphasize that "some of these titles will not be developed through completion, or some may be delayed", but it wasn't quite enough to stifle speculation (thanks, Resetera).
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Take-Two houses several key studios and therefore controls several important franchises, including not just GTA, but Red Dead Redemption, BioShock, Bully, and Max Payne too, to name but a few. Any of those are popular enough in their own right to be getting the remaster/remake treatment. Hopefully, we'll find out more at Gamescom later this month.
In case you missed it, yes, GTA 5 PS5 and Xbox Series X is happening, which means the seminal shooter will have been released on not just one or two console generations, but three in the space of eight years. The "expanded and enhanced" edition will be released on the new consoles in November… even though that means you're not getting GTA 6 just yet.
Analysis: why are we remastering/remaking so many games right now?
As the games industry matures, so does its audience. Before this console generation, backward compatibility and free, automatic next-gen upgrades were nothing but pipe dreams, which meant moving onto the next cool console system often meant leaving our favorite games behind.
That's why we're so obsessed with remasters and remakes. Nostalgia sells, and publishers have seen enormous demand from gamers who'd love to experience an old classic boosted and improved to perform on today's cutting-edge technology. But not only do remasters and remakes allow us to replay the games that were important to us growing up, but they also introduce these titles to a whole new, younger audience, too.
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