Valorant is out now on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, four years after its launch on PC, but despite the recent influx of new and upcoming hero shooters like Marvel Rivals and Concord, Riot Games is confident that its release "scratches a different itch" overall.
Speaking to 12DOVE, Riot Games' director of production and product lead for Valorant, Arnar Hrafn Gylfason, tells us that "we don't think of [Valorant] as a hero shooter," anyway. "At the core, we are a tactical shooter," he says, even though "we happen to have agents who have abilities," which in itself "gives us a lot of liberty and leeway to create all kinds of gameplay fantasies and IP creative fantasies as well."
He continues: "At the core, we are like a very serious, fairly sweaty, competitive, tactical shooter. I think that scratches a different itch than the kind of hero action shooters that we've been seeing in this space for the past few years. And then we're seeing that in how players show up. We're not saying one is better than the other, but they serve different needs, and they serve different player motivations."
Gylfason concludes that at the end of the day, even amongst what's an increasingly crowded genre, "I think there's room for all."
It's a very positive way to look at it and hopefully will prove to be the case as more of these competitive shooters release. After all, on top of the ones already mentioned, we've also got Bad Guitar Studio's 5v5 hero shooter FragPunk on the horizon, as well as Valve's rumored next game seemingly lurking behind the scenes, not to mention the fact that Overwatch 2 is still kicking, too. There's no doubt that Valorant's new console release is going to pull even more players into Riot Games' FPS, though, so we'll just have to wait and see how fans of the genre end up dividing up their time.
You can check out our roundup of the 25 best FPS games for even more like Valorant.
