‘Until Dawn,’ ‘Silent Hill 2’ Remakes Show Relevancy of Retreading IP
Gamers’ upcoming Halloween will likely be dominated by “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6” Zombies mode, but the resurrection of two highly lauded horror games is imminent.
“Until Dawn,” a current-gen remake of PlayStation’s 2015 choice-driven take on horror movies, is out Friday, while Konami classic “Silent Hill 2” has a remake hitting the market Tuesday.
Despite retreading familiar territory for gamers, neither could be more relevant to the console space’s market trends.
As much as enthusiasts want new releases, 2024 has been a difficult year for gaming, marked by more than 13,000 layoffs across the global industry and leading to numerous cancellations and delays, as AAA games take longer to be developed.
Remakes and remasters of prior hits help to fill out release slates and can usually be finished in quicker fashion, skipping most of the time it would normally take to conceive the games in the first place. This strategy has worked out very well for Capcom, which has fully remade several “Resident Evil” titles to great sales and recently remastered “Dead Rising” for the current generation.
Still, developers of “Until Dawn” and “Silent Hill 2” were affected by the market’s instability this year. Ballistic Moon, the studio hired by Sony to remake “Until Dawn” in accordance with updated graphics, better movement systems and some story touches, announced in August it was going to “significantly scale down” staff to keep its future “secure,” a foreboding reminder of what it takes to thrive in the AAA space these days.
Likewise, “Silent Hill 2” developer Bloober Team moved on from a publishing deal with Take-Two Interactive’s Private Division label earlier this year, putting an end to an unannounced survival horror game from Bloober, which is well known for the genre.
The cancellation of the deal came amid ongoing layoffs at Take-Two, putting more pressure on Bloober to deliver the goods on Konami’s lauded IP, a daunting task for any third-party studio given gamers’ skepticism and proclivity for complaining, though August previews of the game were positive.
Konami also has “Silent Hill: Townfall” in development at Annapurna Interactive, whose entire staff left the publisher in September. While Annapurna has said the game will continue development as it rehires key roles, the potential for delays there puts extra pressure on the “Silent Hill 2” remake to deliver.
As for the publishers, a fair amount is riding on both games, especially Sony, which nabbed “Silent Hill 2” as a timed console exclusive for its first year of release.
Like “The Last of Us,” “Until Dawn” is now part of Sony Pictures’ strategy through PlayStation Productions, which has a film adaptation that is currently in production. Sales for the remake will be able to inform how the film is marketed, and data from players’ decisions in the game could also inform post-production if Sony wants to cater to fan expectations.
The “Silent Hill 2” remake is part of Konami’s multipronged strategy to dip its toes back into video games after focusing more heavily on the casino side of its business, with a redo of “Metal Gear Solid 3” also on the way, though still undated.
After “Metal Gear” creator Hideo Kojima left the publisher in 2015 to start his own multigame studio known for “Death Stranding,” leading to the cancellation of a “Silent Hill” game Kojima was going to make with Guillermo del Toro, Konami still has some goodwill to earn back from gamers, especially after 2018’s “Metal Gear Survive” and January’s “Silent Hill: The Short Message” weren’t received well.
Sony will likely be playing close attention to sales for “Silent Hill 2” as well, due to another film adaptation that has already been shot, “Return to Silent Hill.” Per Luminate, the film has yet to be set up with a distributor, which could be an opportunity for Sony to add another horror title to its studio slate, as Blumhouse’s recent PG-13 AI thriller “AfrAId” didn’t make much of a splash at the box office. Back in 2006, Sony saw modest success from the first “Silent Hill” film adaptation.
“Until Dawn,” a current-gen remake of PlayStation’s 2015 choice-driven take on horror movies, is out Friday, while Konami classic “Silent Hill 2” has a remake hitting the market Tuesday.
Despite retreading familiar territory for gamers, neither could be more relevant to the console space’s market trends.
As much as enthusiasts want new releases, 2024 has been a difficult year for gaming, marked by more than 13,000 layoffs across the global industry and leading to numerous cancellations and delays, as AAA games take longer to be developed.
Remakes and remasters of prior hits help to fill out release slates and can usually be finished in quicker fashion, skipping most of the time it would normally take to conceive the games in the first place. This strategy has worked out very well for Capcom, which has fully remade several “Resident Evil” titles to great sales and recently remastered “Dead Rising” for the current generation.
Still, developers of “Until Dawn” and “Silent Hill 2” were affected by the market’s instability this year. Ballistic Moon, the studio hired by Sony to remake “Until Dawn” in accordance with updated graphics, better movement systems and some story touches, announced in August it was going to “significantly scale down” staff to keep its future “secure,” a foreboding reminder of what it takes to thrive in the AAA space these days.
Likewise, “Silent Hill 2” developer Bloober Team moved on from a publishing deal with Take-Two Interactive’s Private Division label earlier this year, putting an end to an unannounced survival horror game from Bloober, which is well known for the genre.
The cancellation of the deal came amid ongoing layoffs at Take-Two, putting more pressure on Bloober to deliver the goods on Konami’s lauded IP, a daunting task for any third-party studio given gamers’ skepticism and proclivity for complaining, though August previews of the game were positive.
Konami also has “Silent Hill: Townfall” in development at Annapurna Interactive, whose entire staff left the publisher in September. While Annapurna has said the game will continue development as it rehires key roles, the potential for delays there puts extra pressure on the “Silent Hill 2” remake to deliver.
As for the publishers, a fair amount is riding on both games, especially Sony, which nabbed “Silent Hill 2” as a timed console exclusive for its first year of release.
Like “The Last of Us,” “Until Dawn” is now part of Sony Pictures’ strategy through PlayStation Productions, which has a film adaptation that is currently in production. Sales for the remake will be able to inform how the film is marketed, and data from players’ decisions in the game could also inform post-production if Sony wants to cater to fan expectations.
The “Silent Hill 2” remake is part of Konami’s multipronged strategy to dip its toes back into video games after focusing more heavily on the casino side of its business, with a redo of “Metal Gear Solid 3” also on the way, though still undated.
After “Metal Gear” creator Hideo Kojima left the publisher in 2015 to start his own multigame studio known for “Death Stranding,” leading to the cancellation of a “Silent Hill” game Kojima was going to make with Guillermo del Toro, Konami still has some goodwill to earn back from gamers, especially after 2018’s “Metal Gear Survive” and January’s “Silent Hill: The Short Message” weren’t received well.
Sony will likely be playing close attention to sales for “Silent Hill 2” as well, due to another film adaptation that has already been shot, “Return to Silent Hill.” Per Luminate, the film has yet to be set up with a distributor, which could be an opportunity for Sony to add another horror title to its studio slate, as Blumhouse’s recent PG-13 AI thriller “AfrAId” didn’t make much of a splash at the box office. Back in 2006, Sony saw modest success from the first “Silent Hill” film adaptation.