Bethesda Re-Releasing Quake 4 For Some Reason

Bethesda announced on its blog today that they would be re-releasing Xbox 360 launch title Quake 4 again on June 19, 2012 for the price of $19.99 USD. And that’s about it. It’s news so unnewsworthy that the official padding only brings this “initial” announcement out to a whopping 86 words.

The only real reason seems to be that it is “becoming harder and harder to find a new copy of the game” and that “it’s possible you might have missed out on one of the system’s best launch titles.” Frankly, I’m curious when the last time anyone tried to buy Quake 4 new was. Is there actually a huge demand for Quake 4 that we’ve all been completely oblivious to or has there just been one guy with a lot of time on his hands out there? Also, it’s hard not to be one of the best system launch titles when your competition is a post-Nintendo Rareware and a bunch of PS2 ports. 

Stranger still is that it’s re-releasing for a price of $20 when it can easily be found new in Walmart bargain bins for about $10. Of course, it doesn’t help that Bethesda has only dropped the MSRP to $45 in the last seven years. At least they’re right about the game being harder and harder to find. Then again, it is about seven years later for a game that wasn’t a big seller to begin with.

So, in short, why?