Ever since Riot unveiled the tactical shooter Valorant in June 2020, there has been one question on the minds of every existing player who owns a console and that is, when is Valorant coming to consoles?
Well, on digging a tad bit deeper we found out that Riot, the company behind the successful FPS game Valorant, had posted job offers for QA engineers to test out Valorant on console, and ever since this news broke, the entire community went crazy over the possibility of seeing Valorant being available on consoles like the PS5 and Xbox.
The community started drawing parallels between the ability to avail games like R6, OverWatch 2, and other titles being available on console and how porting the game to a controller experience would help reach out to a portion of players that are based on consoles exclusively such as kids/teenagers.
Amongst all this, Riot faced flak from the other side of the community worried about how crossplay would ruin the experience for competitive players in PUBs since controller aim assist could be overpowered, potentially giving console players an unfair advantage over PC players during crossplay-enabled matches.
We believe that the fundamentals of the game design are the real issue since Valorant’s gameplay feels crisp on a mouse and keyboard setup. To clear the gap up, Valorant will need t to support aim assist on the controllers, but with the average rounds in the game being very short & with the records of CSGO being launched on Xbox and then discontinued right after because the pinpoint accuracy and speed to lands flicks and the short burst of gameplay weren’t appealing to the console userbase.
Unless the entire experience of the game was reworked for the console, there is no guarantee that Riot will find the effort and time spent worthy of the game in the long run. Based on the last open hint at the game being “prototyped” for a console port by Anna Dolon in 2020, RIOT did admit that it wasn’t a priority for them.
The excitement went over the roof for fans when Riot made an appearance at the Xbox and Bethesda Games showcase in 2022, but this was only to announce that game pass subscribers could access certain rewards and benefits across their competitive games, including Valorant.
Although shifting back into perspective in 2024, things are looking even bleaker for the potential PC port since Riot laid off more than 500+ members of its workforce with Dylan Jadeja, CEO of Riot Games quoting “Over the past few years, as Riot more than doubled in headcount, we spread our efforts across more and more projects without sharp enough razors to decide what players needed most.” He also went on to add “The adjustments we are making aim to focus on areas that have the greatest impact on your experience while reducing the investment in things that don’t.” While this didn’t affect their core IP teams, Riot seems more cautious moving forward – especially when it comes to Research and development.
Where there’s smoke, there is fire which is true to an extent but in this case, there hasn’t been even the tiniest speck of information on Valorant for console and we have good reason to believe that it doesn’t sound too reassuring shortly as well. Stay tuned to Talkesport for the latest updates on Valorant.
In the meanwhile, did you know you could access our Instagram on PS5’s secret web browser just to realize how bad the experience is and eventually give up & open it on your phone?
