Alan Wake 2 will only be released digitally, which is quite unusual for a big game from a notable studio. Remedy Entertainment spoke to some of the qualities of not making a physical version and how that benefits the horror sequel.
Alan Wake 2’s digital release will be cheaper and more polished, Remedy claims
Game director Kyle Rowley spoke to Eurogamer about these advantages and praised the extra time it affords the team.
“As creatives obviously, by going digital-only it does allow us more time to polish the game,” said Rowley. “Like, a significant amount of weeks actually. Because otherwise, the game that goes on the disc, obviously it has to be playable without a patch. We didn’t want to release something that we weren’t proud of basically, and that we didn’t want players to play. So hopefully this way we can give you a better version of the game.”
This is a slightly different reason from the one listed in the official FAQ, which noted this digital-only method would keep the price down. As such, Alan Wake 2 is launching at $49.99 on PC and $59.99 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, steering clear of the $69.99 price point that is quickly becoming the standard.
Not having to print discs (despite the offers) gives Remedy, as Rowley noted, more time to add polish since going gold typically means a game needs to be completed much earlier than its release date would imply. For example, God of War Ragnarök went gold on October 7 with a release date of November 9. Some gaps can be quite long, as The Last of Us Part I went gold on July 11 and wasn’t slated to release until September 2. This gap is often why games have day-one patches that fix a bunch of bugs since that period of time between going gold and release lets teams add more polish, a practice Remedy seems to want to not continue here.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 was an extreme example, as most of the game was included in its day-one update. Rowley, while not using this extreme example, said Remedy didn’t want to do that.
“Finally, we did not want to ship a disc product and have it require a download for the game,” said Rowley. “We do not think this would make for a great experience either.”
