RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 coming 24 September!

Is it available on gog? No, well add it to the ever expanding list of games I won't buy. Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, Jurassic Park Evolution and so on...
 
The improvements of this Complete edition are stated as follows on the steam page: "Play RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 in widescreen for the first time with full 1080p resolution and increased compatibility for new PC hardware." But there was already support for widescreen and resolutions higher than 1080p in the old version of the game (but the UI didn't scale very well). But ok, for this you had to do a simple edit of a file (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/RollerCoaster_Tycoon_3#Widescreen_resolution) to get both of these things. Aside for some compatibility fixes, which hopefully also fixes this bug (crashing of the game when you try to run it) that plagues almost anyone who freshly installs the game: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/RollerCoaster_Tycoon_3#Generic_crash_issues But aside from this resolution-thingy and maybe some compatibility-fixes, did anything else get improved? Because this seems to be just a re-release of a old game (after the big lawsuit with Atari and RCT3 going off the market as a result of that), which isn't a bad thing of course :) Keep up the good work Frontier and awesome that you managed to aquire the publishing rights to RCT3.

Better question... What about those of us who already own RTC 3 Platinum? Can we get it activated on our Steam accounts? Is there at least a discount?
They won't offer an upgrade or discount for this reason: Source: https://twitter.com/frontierdev/status/1303349691535560708
Which sounds like a very sad but valid reason for Frontier to do this. They seem to have fully cut ties with Atari (and the other way around) after the lawsuits in the past. They don't even have, never had actually, access to the RCT3 Platinum Steam page; they probably can't implement a check to see if you bought a version of the game that they didn't publish.

But I think Frontier is gonna have a bit of a marketing-problem: I would mention on the Steam page why you guys can't offer Platinum owners a discount or upgrade to avoid people complaining about that/get confused by it. Also, the "Enhanced for PC" description on the Steam page seems to disappoint many people when they look at the announcement video. Maybe you could describe in more detail in what aspects you improved the game for widescreen support and 1080p support? Maybe even make a promotional video about it? That would avoid a lot of unhappy people as you see a lot of questions floating around about the differences between the Complete Edition and Platinum. Did you add 64-bit support for the game or is that only for the MacOS-release? If you did that, maybe also mention that with the note that you can now thus build bigger parks because of that. That would be a good marketing-push. Overall: I'm afraid that this well-meant intention to put this game back on the storefronts will blow up in your face (on Steam at least, the Switch release is awesome!) if you guys don't adjust some of the marketing... :) Hopefully you guys can do something with this feedback :)

Edit: When I looked at the announcement trailer for this complete edition, I saw the video should be of 1080p (double-checked and I was watching the 1080p version), but it seemed to be of quite low quality/bitrate. It almost looks like 720p or even lower. It looks like it was upscaled from a much lower resolution than 1080p... This makes the game look much worse than it really is. Hopefully you guys could make a new version of this announcement trailer that is of higher quality and thus shows the game in its full glory.

Edit2: I see that the price of the Complete Edition on the Switch is 29.99 euros for pre-purchase. This is not that much luckily, although it is also not that cheap as the much newer Jurassic World Evolution on Switch is 60 bucks; I think it is almost the perfect balance in price for the Switch. But I hope the PC-release will be quite a bit lower, like half that price (15 or 20 euros), as otherwise a lot of people will probably complain about this; they know that a lot more work went into the Switch port than the new PC-version + it is a very old game now. I don't think people will wanna pay 30 euros for this game on Steam.
 
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Absolutely love Planet Coaster of course but will definitely buy this...... Any clues on price? Deluxe Edition is around £15. Starcraft Remastered by Blizzard is only £10, not sure what they're doing on price for Warcraft 3 Reforged also by Blizzard but it's an awful insult to the franchise any way (actually, whilst I am off topic, have Blizzard entirely lost the plot of what haha?)

...... But RCT3 Complete???

What's the money situation please?
 
Absolutely love Planet Coaster of course but will definitely buy this...... Any clues on price? Deluxe Edition is around £15. Starcraft Remastered by Blizzard is only £10, not sure what they're doing on price for Warcraft 3 Reforged also by Blizzard but it's an awful insult to the franchise any way (actually, whilst I am off topic, have Blizzard entirely lost the plot of what haha?)

...... But RCT3 Complete???

What's the money situation please?

I see it being sold for £19.99. I am basing it on the switch eshop price.
 
I still feel RCT3 is a mediocre imitation of RCT2 gameplay without adding anything new to the genre besides the "Now Ride the Rides in 3D!" gimmick. The game looked and performed like "rhymes with sparse" (lol, seriously?), the artstyle was inconsistent and the UI/ UX was subpar. Today the novelty of being 3D has been surpassed by literary every other game in the genre, including Frontier's own titles since. And even though Frontier's plans to "evolve the simulation" never made it into Planet Coaster, it was Parkitect that did manage to innovate in a meaningful way. So today we have Planet Coaster for building fancy parks, NoLimits for (VR) rollercoasters that behave and look realistically and Parkitect for a fun theme park game. Thus rendering RCT3 completely obsolete and irrelevant on PC.

From the statements made by Frontier, I get the impression that we don't have to expect anything more than some config file fixes to allow higher resolutions. Existing owners of the Steam/ physical releases don't get an upgrade of course, but do we really need that? The target audience is obviously Switch players first, and secondly new PC players who never bought the game and were unable to do so after it got pulled from digital shelves. Existing owners basically already own everything on offer it seems.

Heck, the current/ legacy version might even be superior. Frontier didn't answer any concerns about custom content and Steam Workshop from the community. The custom content community was huge back in the day and Frontier didn't mind it then, but their stance seems to have changed after Planet Coaster. Publishers also have a tendency to hide the loathed Denuvo Agreement from the Steam Store page until after release so no guarantees there either.
 
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Thanks for your reply :)
Is it the first appearance of RCT on a Nintendo? I'd sort of see it as a new release for Switch but not for PC. I am now not sure I will bother with it if the PC version is also £20.
No worries!
I see it as the first release of RCT on the switch (there are others, but we don’t talk about them... mostly meh mobile phone ports are brought to the switch).
Seeing the pictures of the game in the nintendo eshop, it looks to use a similar center cursor style of management used in Jurassic World evolution and Planet Coaster console edition. I would say the game is going to be great on the switch, having RCT3 as a portable option would be a blast! I do not know what the price is on PC, as it may be cheaper than the switch, as the switch ports of games are often pricier than other platforms, but not by much these days seeing as how popular the system has become. We have to wait and see!
 
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