I remember the buzz back in mid-2023 like it was yesterday. Rumors had been swirling for months—would Rockstar finally give us a full-blown Red Dead Redemption remake, maybe even in the RDR2 engine? When Take-Two finally broke its silence and announced a port for PS4 and Nintendo Switch, my heart sank a little. Don’t get me wrong, the prospect of playing John Marston’s original journey on a modern console was exciting, but the details quickly turned that excitement into sheer disbelief.

The reveal felt more like a cruel joke than a celebration. No graphical enhancements, no 60fps boost, no multiplayer—just a straight port locked at 30 frames per second. And the price? A whopping $49.99 in the US, £39.99 in the UK. As someone who grew up with the original on Xbox 360, I knew you could grab a pre-owned copy for less than ten dollars. Heck, the digital Xbox version, which runs beautifully with 4K support and backward compatibility enhancements, was often on sale for a fraction of that cost. The fanbase erupted, and rightfully so.

But what really stung was Take-Two’s justification. CEO Strauss Zelnick, in an interview with IGN, doubled down, calling the price “commercially accurate” and insisting the package offered “great value for consumers.” He pointed to the inclusion of the Undead Nightmare DLC and the Game of the Year edition extras as if that were some groundbreaking revelation. I couldn’t help but laugh—on Xbox, the Undead Nightmare standalone plus the base game cost a combined $39.98, with better performance and the multiplayer mode still intact. The math simply did not add up.

Of course, the Undead Nightmare expansion was a fantastic piece of content—a genuinely great standalone game when it first released. But bundling it with a barebones port and slapping on a $50 price tag felt less like a value proposition and more like a cash grab. When IGN pressed Zelnick on a potential PC release—something fans had been begging for since 2010—he sidestepped entirely, saying only that the developers would decide on future announcements. Here we are in 2026, and there’s still no official Red Dead Redemption on PC. The silence has been deafening.

I’ll give credit where it’s due: the physical release of the PS4 and Switch ports did eventually drop in October 2023, and as predicted, retailers began discounting it within months. These days, you can often find the physical version for around $25 to $30 new, and even cheaper second-hand. That’s still more than the Xbox version, but at least it doesn’t feel like you’re being robbed. The digital price, however, has stubbornly remained high—$49.99 as of my last check, with only occasional small discounts. It’s as if Take-Two is determined to prove Zelnick right about that “commercially accurate” label, even if it means leaving money on the table from frustrated fans like me.

The absence of a PC port stings the most. Modders have been begging for a native version to preserve and expand the game, and the community has resorted to emulation just to experience it in higher fidelity. It’s baffling that a title as iconic as Red Dead Redemption remains locked away from an entire platform, especially when its sequel is one of the most modded games on PC. Take-Two’s reluctance to greenlight a PC version feels like a missed opportunity of epic proportions.

So what’s a fan to do in 2026? Personally, I gave up waiting. I dusted off my old Xbox One X, picked up a digital copy of the Red Dead Redemption Game of the Year edition for a crisp $10 during a sale, and I’ve been enjoying my return to New Austin at 4K, 60fps, with all the DLC and multiplayer I could want. It’s a bittersweet victory. On one hand, I finally get to replay an absolute masterpiece without feeling exploited. On the other, it’s a reminder of how disconnected some publishers can be from their communities.

Looking back, the whole saga taught me a valuable lesson: patience and platform choice matter. Take-Two’s pricing strategy might have been “commercially accurate” in a vacuum, but it ignored the reality of the market and the intelligence of its customers. Three years later, that port still feels like a product designed for nobody in particular—a strange, overpriced relic that satisfied neither newcomers nor hardcore fans. Unless you absolutely must play on Switch or PS4, there’s a better, cheaper, and more feature-complete way to experience John Marston’s tale. And until Rockstar decides to bless us with a true remaster or a PC release, I’ll be sticking with my Xbox and my ten-dollar copy. Yippee ki-yay, indeed. 🤠