Remaster for Xenosaga Trilogy was Looked At, But Never Eventuated

Developed by Monolith Soft in the 2000s exclusively for the PlayStation 2, the Xenosaga series was a trilogy of underappreciated science fiction RPG games which favoured a more cinematic approach to its delivery of narrative complemented by a rather fun battle system, generally likable / well-developed characters and good visuals. While initially expected to span six games, deemed to not have met developer expectations, it was later reduced down to three titles: Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht, Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse and Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra.

As other games of the PlayStation 2 era have found some success as remastered collections on current generation platforms, some might have had hopes that the trilogy would once again become available on the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and/or Xbox One. Unfortunately, that is looking less and less likely.

In 2014 when interest was first generated about a Xenosaga HD Collection, Katsuhiro Harada shared this extensive post about the possibility, stating that “I was not able to find the necessary market size that will pay for the development fee needed to create the HD remaster”, and what he needed “are the voices from many fans”. Five years on and that stance has not changed, confirming planning “progressed to the remaster’s plan, but failed in a profitable market analysis” and that “This plan will be difficult to resurface”.



Over the last couple of days, Mr Harada has commented on a few further comments made following his confirmation:



None of the discussions mentions the possibility of a direct PS2 to Current Generation port of the games in their original format, as other publishers have decided to do with titles they haven’t released as a Remastered Edition. But at this time, things don’t look too positive about an eventual re-release. If you do like classic narrative-driven RPG’s however, I would recommend hunting around for pre-owned copies of all three games.

Since Xenosaga III, Monolith Soft has found success with series including Xenoblade Chronicles on the Nintendo Wii, Wii U and Switch; and Project X Zone on the Nintendo 3DS.

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