It's only been one week, but Valorant's console port has left its open beta and is officially out in its full form on both PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in North America, Europe, Brazil, and Japan, so you can dive into the tactical first-person shooter right now.
I'm not sure anyone saw this coming quite so soon, but after a limited beta in June followed by the recent open beta, Riot Games is clearly confident that everything is ready to go. Its release has come right alongside the announcement, so I can imagine that many FPS fans are already scrambling to get the game downloaded (and if you weren't already, then hey, here's your heads up).
Valorant's PC version launched back in 2020, so console players have been waiting for quite some time for the chance to dive in themselves. In an interview with 12DOVE, Riot Games' director of production and product lead for Valorant, Arnar Hrafn Gylfason, tells us that the port was "definitely not planned from the start," with it being "a very different time" back at that initial release. However, he says that the team eventually began to consider where else players who are "hungry for a game like Valorant" might be hiding.
"Obviously, console players are just as competitive and hungry and kind of sweaty as the PC players are," he says. "Do they have a game? Is there space for Valorant on that platform and for those players? And I think the answer quickly became, yes, if we can translate the core gameplay promise in the right way, absolutely we believe this is the right game to bring to those players."
Valorant's console release is also coming at a time where new and upcoming hero shooters seem to be appearing everywhere – from Marvel Rivals, to FragPunk, and even the premium PS5 game, Concord. However, Gylfason is confident that Valorant still stands out here – the team doesn't actually "think of ourselves as a hero shooter" in the first place, but rather "a tactical shooter," even if "we happen to have agents who have abilities" in the game's roster.
"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," he continues, adding that, ultimately, "I think there's room for all."
On its console release, Gylfason says, "We are so excited to be welcoming this brand new audience" to the game, noting that Riot is hoping to create "one Valorant ecosystem and community" that both the PC and console audience are part of.
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