Gamespot shamefully recycles articles that are years old for search engine optimization which creates these weird dissonance feelings where you realize that From Software has ALREADY RELEASED two games since Sekiro.
"Why yes, I do think they have two new games planned for release after Sekiro. Neither of them are Bloodborne 2 of course because we know them to be Elden Ring and Armored Core VI and we know that because it has already happened."
I don't think we really have any major areas of disagreement left tbh. There's nothing that you said that I really have to much objection to except for one minor quibble.
Doing it right also means the value aspect. All of it is a part of the overall "sum value" for lack of a better way of phrasing it.
If Konami was including more games, or doing more improvements on the games they did include, or some combo of adding more value then I think I'd have less objection to the idea that they are "doing it right" with a master collection. But what they are doing/willing to give for the price in question isn't something you can separate out from what the value proposition is.
So I object to the summation/characterization the author arrives at here because they (Konami) aren't doing a whole lot to update the games that are included, aren't including as much as they could, and are charging an absolute premium.
2+2 =...fish?
The math doesn't add up to this "doing it right". Either do more work to make the games better, include more games, charge less, etc. Some combo of make the value better = doing it right.
Yeah, I think that's a pretty good point TBH. Different evaluation criteria.
I suppose when I'm thinking "done right" I just set the bar a little higher. They have all of the source code. However hard it may to find the games out in the marketplace/wilderness...that is the result of artificial scarcity in the digital age right? It doesn't have to be the case.
When I look at this, I see them essentially rereleasing stuff that they already own with the bare minimum of updating...but at a fresh new game price point.
Marketing repackaging...not any sort of value add that isn't driven by really old games being hard to find.
What did Konami actually DO to justify a big price for really old games other than a fresh pink bow on the package and eliminate the scarcity?
Edit: Trying to come up with a better way of phrasing this. I understand there is currently a concern about old game preservation. But should cookies really be given for a company basically NOT losing their stuff and then reselling it without any real improvement decades later? Do I get an attaboy for properly backing up my hard drive to avoid losing stuff?
Another outlet has a very different take on this that basically says it is lazy, with barely upgraded visuals and with even basic quality of life improvements like uncapping the 30fps framerate not done on some games.
Edit: Even from the full GS article, I'm a little unclear what the basis for the headline that this is being done right are. The full article here even makes clear that any improvements or upgrades are extremely minimal. So...doing it right is a slightly upgraded UI, barely updated visuals, some of the bonus content and a "story to date" addition...at a $60 price point for ancient, original NES era, games?
Kind of sounds like nostalgia influenced the reviewer on this one. I'd expect a bit more.
Your strawman was that I didn't like adult games because I didn't like The Last of Us Part 2. That is a facile argument that games similar to TLoU2 are the ONLY adult games and the only alternative is games like Pokemon or Kingdom Hearts.
My favorite game of all time, for example, is Witcher 3. Second favorite? Planescape: Torment. Hardly Pokemon or Kingdom Hearts. (Both of which I've never played and have zero interest in.) Both games have their dark and depressing points and neither are short either. Heck, I can list other "dark" games that I liked perfectly well. Spec Ops: The Line, the two Plague Tale games or even the original Last of Us game are all examples.
TLoU2 was gratuitously over the top dark, dank and depressing and was padded out way, way to long. It had a single theme: "vengeance is a bad thing and can destroy someone". Fine. Nothing wrong with that. It then hammered that over and over and over and over and over again.
Both you and Blindsnake seem to be personally offended that LoU2 didn't click for me and that ONLY Pokemon or Kingdom Hearts fans wouldn't like or be able to handle a game like LoU2.
Sorry, that is a strawman. It is possible to both like adult games and find TLoU2 to be poorly written and a non-stop, poorly paced, overly long, misery simulator.
BeefoTheBold's comments