After years of waiting and months of reignited rumors of a remaster, Rockstar Games has finally revealed a port for the first Red Dead Redemption. Over a decade after its release, the critically-acclaimed third-person shooter is making the jump to PlayStation 4 and Switch on August 17, but a “next-gen” upgrade for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC is seemingly not happening.
The PS4 and Switch versions will be $50, with a physical release shipping on October 13. While the ports won’t include any changes to the underlying game, they will come with Undead Nightmare, a zombie story campaign that was added to the Game of the Year edition of Red Dead Redemption over a decade ago. If you were hoping for a 4K update or 60fps mode, however, you’re out of luck. The PS4 and Switch ports won’t support multiplayer either.
The original Red Dead Redemption takes place four years after the events of Red Dead Redemption 2 and follows rancher and former outlaw John Marston as he’s tasked with capturing his former gang members. While still sprawling, it’s a more focused tale than the prequel that proceeded it, but it also suffered from a decent number of bugs and limitations, like the fact that Marston can’t swim.
The frenzy around the potential return of the original Red Dead Redemption kicked off in June when it appeared on the South Korea game rating body’s list of submissions. The game was never ported to PC and, among relatively current consoles, could only be played on Xbox One and Series X/S via Microsoft’s backwards compatibility program. It had briefly been available to stream through PlayStation Now, but became inaccessible on PS5 after that program merged with PlayStation Plus.
Kotaku previously reported that a fullblown remaster of Red Dead Redemption had been shelved after the debacle around the 2021 Grand Theft Auto remaster trilogy, which included tons of issues, including a subpar HD transformation of the original games’ look and style. Despite a bevy of post-launch updates to address many of the bugs and performance problems, some diehard fans still remain unhappy with the overall state of the remasters.
Rockstar Games is currenlty working Grand Theft Auto VI, some of which leaked last year in an unprecedented hack that led tons of prototype footage to appear online. It co-stars a woman and will set in Miami, and while it doesn’t have an official release date yet, publisher Take-Two has strongly hinted that it expects the game to arrive sometime before April 2025, meaning it could launch as soon as next year.
Update 8/7/23 10:22 a.m. ET: Added more information about the price from Rockstar’s website.
Update 8/7/23 11:03 a.m. ET: Added info about multiplayer support.