On Monday, Take-Two announced a new version of Red Dead Redemption for PlayStation 4 and Switch will be launching on August 17th, marking the first time the classic western will be available on either platform. But people aren’t happy.

Rather than a full remaster, which is what the majority of fans were hoping for, Take-Two has titled this a “conversion” that doesn’t appear to have any enhancements or upgrades, and while it does contain the Undead Nightmare expansion the game’s multiplayer has been stripped out. In other words, it appears to be a straightforward port.

For this, Take-Two and Rockstar are charging $50/£40. Fans have rightfully been pointing out that you can currently buy the Xbox 360 version of the game on the Xbox store for £25 and the Undead Nightmare expansion for £6.75. Not only is it perfectly playable, but if you use an Xbox Series S/X the game’s resolution is significantly boosted making it look much sharper than the original 720p image.

This leaves the Xbox version as the far superior version of the game, costing less and looking better.

After the Take-Two earnings call, IGN asked CEO Strauss Zelnick about the $50 pricepoint, to which Zelnick gave a frustratingly corporate answer: “That’s just what we believe is the commercially accurate price for it.”

Yup, that should certainly help calm down the ire of the Internet.

While it’s fantastic to see Red Dead Redemption being made available on PS4 and Switch, this feels like a lazy move from Take-Two. With their vast resources and the popularity of Red Dead, a remaster seems like a no-brainer

In 2021 during the  Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Zelnick discussed how his company handles remasters and remakes.

“I’m not sure there’ll be a bigger part of the strategy,” he said. “Remastering has always been a part of the strategy. We’ve done differently than the competition – we don’t just port titles over, we actually take the time to do the very best job we can making the title different for the new release, for the new technology that we’re launching it on.”

“So, we improve the technology, we upgrade the visuals, and we make performance enhancements. And that’s why I think our remastered titles typically do so well.”

This really hasn’t aged very well. Since these comments, Take-Two has released the poorly received Grand Theft Autio: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition which was critically panned thanks to a variety of issues and baffling design choices. And now we’re getting a straight port of Red Dead Redemption.