It's been a rough week for both fans of Ubisoft's 2003 fan favorite first person shooter XIII as well as PlayMagic, the studio who worked on the recently released remake. While fans were looking forward to a remake of the classic shooter, the end result was a poorly received technical mess marred by bugs, an art style that removes the game's original personality, performance issues, and strange AI behavior. Needless to say, the XIII remake isn't the game many were hoping for, though even with all the negativity surrounding the experience, fans found a creative way to take out their frustrations.
With the XIII Remake launching in full last week and reviews highlighting the many problems, fans instead seemed to turn their attention to the original 2003 version developed and published by Ubisoft. To celebrate the game's launch, many places such as Steam had the original game on sale. Those reduced prices as well as the disappointment in the remake seems to have pushed people to seek out the original title instead.
In fact, this seems to have especially true in the United Kingdom as ReedPop's Head of Games Christopher Dring reported that the original 2003 game sold more copies last week than the newly launched Remake version from developer PlayMagic and publisher Microids. Clearly the reception seems to have had an impact either triggering nostalgia for those who played the original, or perhaps getting people curious enough to experience the original title.
It's definitely a unique situation, even in an era where companies are producing more and more remakes with more recent examples like Final Fantasy 7, Demon's Souls, Resident Evil 2 and 3, plus the upcoming Prince of Persia Sands of Time. While not every remade version of a game is a smashing success, it's incredibly rare to see players purchase the legacy title in such higher numbers than the newest release.
The poor reception hasn't been lost on developer PlayMagic or its publisher Microids. Very soon after the launch of the game, an official statement came out acknowledging the numerous issues and problems. The statement went on to apologize for the state of the game and that all player criticisms and disappointments have been heard. Numerous issues were planned to be fixed in a day one update but the current pandemic and work from home situations have left the teams far more behind schedule than anticipated. The statement concludes by thanking fans for the feedback and that all issues and comments are being passed along to the development team.
XIII is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and a Nintendo Switch version is planned for release in 2021.