“An Achievable Goal”- Devs Talk Valorant on Console

The Riot Games development team that worked on Valorant recently sat down with Eurogamer in a detailed interview. They spoke about the various developments in the game, its release, and its future. The team responded to many interesting queries, one specifically about a future release on consoles. 

The Principal Engineer of the Valorant dev team had an interesting opinion on Valorant being ported over to consoles. He was asked if Valorant could ever see a console port, with the current advancements in display technology and processing power of new consoles.

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Romero stated that the biggest challenge to porting Valorant over to consoles is “being able to replicate the core game experience using a gamepad controller.” This is definitely a hotbed issue in all competitive eSports. Controller/console players and PC eSports players have historically segregated themselves since they are not on a level playing field.

Valorant on Consoles is possible in the near future

Mouse and Keyboard setups offer the player much more control over the movement and aiming mechanics in the game. This gives PC eSports professionals unfair advantages while playing against their console counterparts.

The opposite is also true, in many cases. Specifically, in Fortnite, controller vs mouse and keyboard is a definite burning issue. Controller players almost always have a small amount of aim assistance, while playing with gamepads in Fortnite. This again seems to take away from the competitive experience behind the game, making the game a lot easier compared to mouse/keyboard players.

Romero spoke about this delicate balance, taking care to weigh enjoyment and competition while using controllers and gamepads. “How much aiming and movement assistance can we provide without sacrificing the overall competitive environment?”

He also spoke about how the hardware behind gaming consoles has caught up to PCs, to a large extent. “In terms of performance, we believe getting Valorant running at 120Hz on next-gen consoles is an achievable goal.”

He, however, took note of the limitations the consoles on the market have, as of now. “Being able to push a 4K resolution at 120Hz comes with its own set of challenges. Even with an optimized renderer and low instruction count pixel shaders, rendering a large amount of pixels takes a significant amount of time.”

Also Read – Valorant: Competitive Delayed Due to Spawn Bug

Valorant has been gaining steam, long after its impressive run in the beta stage. If the game could be ported over to consoles, with a good balance between competitiveness and enjoyment, the new eSport of the decade could become massively successful.