Why Video Game Remakes Are the Industry's Safest Bet

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is getting a full remake nearly 30 years after the original Nintendo 64 release — and the games industry treats projects like this as one of its safest commercial plays. Piers Harding-Rolls, head of games research at Ampere Analysis, calls remasters and remakes a "really successful" strategy for the sector.

"Tying in with established audiences and building on existing content is quite a safe route for a lot of companies," Harding-Rolls says. In many cases it's simply cheaper to update an existing game than to build a new title from scratch.

For practitioners, that's the core economics: known intellectual property, a pre-installed audience, and development costs that don't start from zero.

What does nostalgia actually do for a game's audience?

The emotional pull is real and measurable in behavior. When Kacey Doran, who now teaches an esports course at Rowan University in New Jersey, saw footage of the redesigned Ocarina of Time, she messaged her sister immediately: "Have you seen this?" Her sister replied: "I'm not tearing up… YOU'RE tearing up."

The sisters had played the original together in the late 1990s, with a 10-year-old Doran reading the on-screen dialogue aloud to her younger sibling as they worked through the game's sprawling, puzzle-filled dungeons. It was the first game Doran ever completed. She describes the 1998 original as having a "magical" quality she hopes to rediscover — and share with her sister's children.

Tim Wulf, a researcher at the Centre of Advanced Internet Studies in Bochum, Germany, explains the mechanism. Nostalgia is a mixed emotion, he says: positive aspects paired with a kind of sadness. Happiness in remembering things that mattered, alongside the awareness that the time is gone.

"It's a social emotion because memories that induce nostalgia for us are connected to other people," Wulf says. It can boost self-esteem while highlighting key social bonds.

Games, he argues, are unusually good at triggering it because players can "jump into the same environment." Games act like time machines for our emotions — and returning to familiar places can feel stabilizing in an ever-changing world. Doran adds a practical note: revisiting an old game is satisfying because previously learned skills still work. You know what to do. You're winning again.

What's the risk for developers?

Remakes are a double-edged sword. Some gamers are fiercely protective of favorite titles, and new versions don't always meet astronomically high expectations. Ocarina of Time raises the stakes further: since its release it has been considered by many one of the greatest games ever made. Harding-Rolls notes that interest among the Gen Z gamers he works with is "really high."

The tension between originals and remakes is well documented. In 2021, Square Enix released Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139..., a remaster of a game first published in 2010. One reviewer wrote: "What we're left with is two nearly identical Niers each vying to be the true Nier."

Stephanie Ijoma, chief executive and founder of the consultancy and creative agency NNESAGA, puts the creative problem bluntly: "There's always going to be that fan base or group of people that are going to nit-pick." Developers, she says, must "find the right balance" between honoring fans and being creative with the material. Her rule: "You can't make art in fear, you can't create in fear."

Ijoma cites Final Fantasy VII as the model. First released in 1997, remade to huge anticipation in 2020, it let her share a game she'd played in the late 1990s with younger players. Remakes solve a practical problem too: old hardware isn't easy to get running.

Where does this leave indie studios?

Niklas Hallin, a solo developer who runs the studio Neckbolt, points to accessibility. "I've tried multiple times to play Silent Hill 2 because I'm interested in older games but it's such a difficult game to come into nowadays," he says. "They made a remake and it's so smooth, it just works. It works on your modern hardware."

Hallin didn't play many games as a child, so nostalgia isn't his personal motivator. But he builds subtle stylistic references to classics into his own titles because gamers respond to them — and because retro aesthetics are achievable on an indie budget. "You can't compete with billion dollar budgets, super high-fidelity, Triple A graphics," he says.

Recent successes include remakes of Resident Evil 4 and Assassin's Creed Black Flag, alongside the Ocarina of Time project arriving on the Switch 2 later this year.

The open question: with visual gaps between older and newer games narrowing, will remaking a 2026 game in 2038 make sense? Harding-Rolls predicts companies will keep connecting new audiences to classics — but the emphasis will shift from graphics toward "reinterpretations" and versions with additional content. Nostalgia alone isn't enough, as Wulf himself proves: despite loving the original, he's skipping the remake. "I want a new game — I don't want to play an old game," he says.