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For months now, rumors have been swirling that Rockstar Games was working on a modern release of their beloved Old West action title, Red Dead Redemption. Those rumors even included the idea that Rockstar was working on a remaster of Red Dead Redemption, though those rumors were hit by another rumor saying that the studio canned the idea following the poor reception to the GTA Trilogy.
Following word that the remaster was canned, the rumors quieted down and all hope seemed to be lost. That was the case until June 2023 when a Korean ratings board gave a new classification for Red Dead Redemption. Then in late July 2023 people noticed that Rockstar Games updated some website content for Red Dead Redemption. Those updates included a new logo for Red Dead redemption along with some new codewords hinting that something was at least happening.
It was actually happening, right? Red Dead Redemption was totally getting remastered and brought over to modern hardware, right? And PC too?
Haha... oh, if only.
Today, Rockstar Games announced that they are releasing Red Dead Redemption again! Except, they are only releasing it only for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.
Rockstar made the announcement earlier today, saying that Red Dead Redemption, plus Undead Nightmare, will hit Switch and PS4 on August 17. This release is being handled by Double Eleven Studios and will cost you a $49.99 (USD). This upcoming release is just a port of the original game and has not, as far as Rockstar indicates, been remastered in any way. You may have more stable framerates (up to 30FPS) and a slightly higher resolution than the original release due to it running on slightly better hardware, but that will be it.
PlayStation 5? Xbox Series X|S? PC? Nope. If you want to play Red Dead Redemption on that newer console hardware, you will have to settle for backwards compatibility.
Red Dead Redemption first came out in 2010 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
What's interesting to me though is which version they're porting, the PS3 version is busted in many ways so you'd assume they'd start with the 360 version, and the reason they aren't re-releasing this on the Xbox is because it's still backwards compatible, so either they're updating the 360 version to work on PS4 and Switch, fixing the PS3 version or they're starting with the source code, which sounds like too much work for a simple port, but either way if you're putting that amount of work in... dude... just remaster it.
Take Two/Rockstar aren't short on funds and weird half assed ports like this don't make any kind of impression, they have time and budget i just don't know why they aren't willing to do it right.