Riot Games plans to ‘invest heavily’ into growing the UK and Nordic market for Valorant over the next couple of years, sources have told Esports News UK.
The news comes one week after Riot announced the release of the Valorant console beta, which goes live today (June 14th 2024) from 9pm BST on Xbox Series X|S and PS5.
The UK has always had a strong console market, with Call of Duty and FIFA being the most popular game series on our shores, and it looks like Riot wants to tap into that.
In terms of esports, don’t expect anything big for Valorant esports on consoles, but we’re told Riot is looking into ways it can get something going, perhaps something more targeted, smaller and local. And the Valorant console beta and launch could certainly act as a springboard to get more players interested in esports and the Valorant communities in general.
Free-to-play 5v5 team shooter Valorant first launched on PC four years ago – you can see how the esports side of things has progressed here in our recent history of UK Valorant esports article.
In the UK and Nordics, there’s the Valorant Challengers North Polaris league, which recently underwent a soft rebrand.
We’ve reached out to Riot for comment.
More info on the Valorant console beta
The limited Valorant console beta kicks off in the US, Canada, UK, Europe and Japan today, before possibly rolling out to remaining global regions shortly thereafter.
While both Xbox and PS5 formats feature ‘custom-built Valorant gameplay’, Riot said in a press release, cross-play will not be available between PC and console player matches.
However, Valorant players on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5 will have a connected, shared inventory and gameplay progression tied to their Valorant account. And both PC and console players will receive simultaneous platform releases of all live patch balances, new agents, maps, premium content and additional live service features.
Arnar Gylfason, Production Director of Valorant at Riot Games, said: “We believe there are millions of players that would love to play Valorant, but currently can’t, and we hope to change that with bringing Valorant to consoles. We aim to provide them the joy of the Valorant experience and all it entails: a core tactical shooter gameplay focused on mastery and player expression, a team based competitive environment where match quality and fairness comes first, our amazing ecosystem with a unique style, high quality cosmetics and a thriving community that values personal and competitive identity.
“One of my favorite new features for consoles is ‘Focus’ while shooting. In order to provide the same experience as PC, where Hip-Fire is the primary shooting mode and ADS is a secondary, supporting mode, we experimented with multiple adaptations and gamepad sensitivities. But on console, shooting on hip-fire never felt the same and the player didn’t have the same range of possibilities and the same level of gameplay expression as on PC. And that’s when Focus comes in.
“Focus is a new shooting mode that behaves essentially like Hip-Fire, but with reduced sensitivity. This way, players can use Hip-Fire whenever they need speed in moving their camera/aim (peeking corners, dodging utility), but utilize focus mode whenever they need precision (getting those cool headshots). This also approximates the shooting mechanic to what console players are used to in shooters, all of this without losing the added value Valorant’s ADS provides.”
There’s more over at beta.playvalorant.com
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
