Last week, LucasArts announced they’d blow the dust off their venerable adventure games catalog, offering an ongoing selection of hits via Steam. Of course, gamers everywhere rejoiced, and the immediate questions were all positive: ‘what other platfroms will these be available on?’ and ‘what other classics will they release next?’
The announcement came on top of Major Nelson’s release of this summer’s Xbox LIVE Arcade schedule. They’re mining some classics as well, with remakes of LucasArts’ own Secret of Monkey Island and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time as well as a re-release of Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
These announcements, and the fanfare surrounding them, show what a compelling revenue stream a publisher’s back catalog can make. And it makes very good sense. It takes a much smaller team and significantly less expense to prep an old, critically acclaimed gem for re-rerelease on a new system, even in the case of a full refresh like this week’s stellar Secret of Monkey Island remake. Gamers that might just be discovering that IP through Telltale’s new episodic Tales of Monkey Island series can go back to the original and see what made these characters and the whole SCUMM system so endearing.
Publishers don’t need to put any expense or energy into packaging these titles and bringing them to retail. When the games are strong enough, as is the case with LucasArts’ catalog, they don’t even really need to market them very much. The enthusiast community will do it for them. Essentially, a rerelease of a true masterpiece is a pure profit play for a publisher that put in all the years of hard work building a great library.
As long as publishers don’t turn the valve too far and just start releasing every piece of crap title they’ve ever produced, I hope to see a lot more classics coming down the pipe. In this still very sequel-heavy business, re-releasing the early gems from a series a few months ahead of a new installment could be a very wise marketing spend. For instance, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus should hit the PSN store a few weeks before The Last Guardian hits the shelves.
