Xenoblade: Chronicles isn’t exactly the easiest game in the world to find. Sure, you can pick it up on Amazon, but that will cost you about 60 bucks. Used.
With just a disc and no manual.
That’s not exactly cheap…
Thankfully, Nintendo has decided to give gamers a remake for their all new 3DS system. Now granted, they’re also fragmenting the 3DS population by saying “hey, here’s this totally awesome game that you don’t need to track down and bust out your Wii to play, but you’re going to have to buy new hardware to play it!” That honestly stinks. A lot. But Nintendo is at least sort of kinda realizing they have a problem:
Their first-party games are way too expensive.
Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve talked about this subject, but it’s still something that absolutely needs to be repeated. Games like Kirby’s Return to Dreamland are, somehow, too much damn money. While this problem has been slowly but surely fixing itself (the Mario Galaxy games are finally in a much more realistic price range), it’s still something Nintendo has struggled with through their history.
Hopefully, the tides are beginning to change. One of the ways that Nintendo has been selling their new systems recently is with remakes. The original DS saw Super Mario 64. The 3DS saw Ocarina of Time. The Wii U saw Windwaker. The New 3DS will see Xenoblade. In addition, one of the common themes of this generation has been remakes; games like The Last of Us and Halo: The Master Chief Collection are finding new life on new hardware. Given the abundance of quality video games from the Wii, it would make common sense for more Wii gems to find new life and a new audience.
So what could this mean for the future? More remakes on new hardware releases? Honestly, I hope not. It’s nice now to re-introduce beloved classics that were missed when they released. Eventually, though, we’ll run out of these classics. But that’s not the issue here; it’s that Nintendo might be finally realizing that some of their games are too expensive, whether it’s their MSRP or their digital price. They’re also realizing that people want to play these games they heard so many things about.
And hey, if Xenoblade: Chronicles could see two releases on two different platforms, we might just get that Mother 3 localization.
Maybe.
Possibly.
Probably.
Not. =(
