In a recent discussion with VGC, Nightdive Studios bosses Stephen Kick and Larry Kuperman have stated that they feel the company is ready to start tackling Xbox 360 and PS3 remasters. While the company has made a name for itself remastering games from the sixth console generation and earlier, including excellent re-releases such as the recent Doom and Quake remasters, its biggest hurdle would be coming to terms with the “unique” architecture of the PS3.
“We stand ready,” said Kuperman about the potential of PS3 games finally getting a second shot at life. “I would begin asking a couple of questions. Was it Xbox 360 exclusive, or was there a PC version out too? Because that also changes things, the little preservation that’s available. Do we have source code? If so, what’s the quality of the source code? How about the assets? Those are the kinds of considerations that we have there. That being said, there were some really good games that came out in that era that shouldn’t be lost.” One of the most requested is Condemned 2: Bloodshot, which surprisingly never had a PC port.
Kick then mentioned a game like 2008’s Haze. Developed by Free Radical for the PS3, it was heavily hyped up as a return from the studio that brought us Time Splitters, but was ultimately a failure on not only a sales level, but a gameplay one too. Kick spoke about how with some of Nightdive’s other remasters, his team has spoken to the original developers to tweak certain aspects that maybe failed to deliver on their promise initially.
“We would go to the original designers, and we would say: ‘It didn’t do as well as you had hoped, I’m sure you’ve had a lot of time to ruminate and to think about what you would have done differently,’” Kick said. “We’ve had these discussions before with [the original] developers on some of these games, and we’ve given them an opportunity to come back and say ‘this is what I would have done.’”
The rest of the chat brings up the challenges that would be present with PS3 exclusive games and how even Sony had troubles dealing with backwards compatibility during that era. Suffice it to say, it would be a major challenge, but Nightdive isn’t ready to back down. I wouldn’t expect most of these titles to come to the original Nintendo Switch, but the Switch 2 should definitely be more than capable of handling Xbox 360 and PS3 titles.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
