Until now, the popular hero shooter Valorant could only be played on the computer. Now the Riot title is set to storm the consoles – with specially developed gameplay
Since its release in June 2020, Valorant has taken the eSports scene by storm. According to Statista, between 50 and 100 million hours of content are watched on Twitch every month for the shooter from Riot Games. Figures that the publisher would like to increase further in the future by bringing the game to Sony and Microsoft consoles after four years of PC exclusivity
Beta launch as early as mid-June
The hit game will be available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox XS in just a few days. On June 14, a limited beta version will launch in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Japan, as Andy Ho, Executive Producer for Valorant, announced at the Summer Game Fest 2024
Ho and his colleagues have come up with a few ideas for the move to the new hardware. After all, according to the press release, “the strict standards of competitive gameplay” are the focus of the franchise expansion. The console versions of the game would therefore feature “specially developed Valorant gameplay.”
“We knew we had to deliver the same uncompromising competitive experience that PC gamers have enjoyed for years: a precise team-based tactical shooter,” says Arnar Gylfason, Production Director of Valorant. That’s why there will be no cross-play with PC players. This would not be compatible with the “standards for competitive integrity”.
However, cross-progress is included. Anyone who logs in with their existing Valorant account on the console will not start from scratch. Instead, progress will be earned and saved equally on all platforms, which is why parallelism is also to be created in other facets: “Both PC and console players will receive all game balance patches, new agents, maps, premium content and additional live service features on all platforms at the same time,” says Riot. Console players can also look forward to the new map, “Abyss”
