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Riot Games has officially announced this Valorant coming to consoles. The announcement of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 versions of the tactical shooter came during the Summer Game Fest show on Friday, but Polygon had a chance to check out the game early and talk to its developers about how it translates to the new platforms.

Bringing Valorant to consoles was a no-brainer for Riot, according to its developers. After all, according to the studio, the idea of ​​an audience that wants a complex tactical game is not unique to the PC. Such players exist on consoles; they just didn’t have a game that fit that niche.

“We operate from the assumption that competitive players are competitive players, no matter what platform they choose to play on,” Arnar Gilfasson, Valorantthe production director of, told Polygon. “It’s a bit of a leap of faith… to bring this hardcore competitive tactical shooter to a platform that doesn’t have the same story and history of tactical shooters as PC.”

But even if the audience was there, Riot’s bigger challenge was making sure it got the gameplay right when porting it from PC to console.

“The guiding light has always been that the game has to feel good to play on consoles for us to want to make it,” Gilfason said. “That has always been true. When the game didn’t look good or wasn’t fun to play, we were like, We either have to work this out or we don’t [make] it.“

The first big hurdle was figuring out how to translate ValorantMethodical controller shooting. Precision gunplay is the name of the game for ValorantThe PC version of is, so the console version had to match without the benefit of a keyboard and mouse to make this precision easier. Riot’s answer to this is something called Focus Mode, which allows players to enter a different mode with lower sensitivity when they pull L2 or the left trigger.

Image: The Game Awards/Twitch

According to Gylfason, this mode serves two purposes for Riot. It allows such precision that ValorantQuick firefights enforce, allowing players to aim their analog stick at clicking targets before pulling the trigger to aim their fine reticle at the target’s head. It also allows Riot to retain the familiar left-trigger-then-right-trigger mechanic common in console shooters—the same one that Call of Duty helped create nearly two decades ago.

All of this adds up to an experience that, while playing, feels fundamentally and unmistakably similar Valorant. It’s still a tactical shooter, it’s still slow and careful, and almost no changes have been made to the core gameplay to bring it to consoles. Gunfights are also still extremely fast and demanding, rewarding headshots above all else. And the focus mode, mixed with a very light aim assist, makes taking those headshots feel as smooth and enjoyable as on the original PC, if a little less precise.

Image: Riot Games

“I really should have felt that way Valorant with a different input mechanism,” Gylfason said in a presentation to journalists and content creators ahead of the console version’s reveal. “We never want players to feel like second-class citizens just based on what platform they’ve chosen to play on.”

But just because Riot wants to tap into the console audience with this version of the game doesn’t mean PC players can’t dip their toes into the Xbox and PlayStation from time to time. As part of the initial announcement for the console version, Riot also made it clear that all progress and cosmetics will transfer between player accounts on each platform, so you won’t have to re-purchase skins no matter where you play.

The only thing that won’t carry over is your competitive rank, which will be separate for PC and consoles. This is largely due to the fact that Riot will not offer cross-play between PC and console for Valorant — although Xbox and PlayStation players will be able to play together. While targeting consoles feels great, it doesn’t live up to the speed and precision of a mouse and keyboard, which is probably why Riot kept these rankings separate.

ValorantThe console versions of will be playable in a limited beta starting June 14 on both Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, but the developer has yet to reveal a full release date for the game.