Later this week Valorant will make its way onto consoles for the first time, launching in beta form on both the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. However, some PS5 fans are upset that Valorant will not make use of one of the PS5’s best features because it has to maintain parity with the Xbox version.
Valorant is, of course, a first person shooter where precision aim is key. On PC its easy to make work with the control that a mouse allows for when it comes to tiny movements. However, on console recreating that precision aiming system isn’t easy, with Riot introducing a Focus Aim system for Valorant that will make it easier to hip fire when active, while stilling giving fast movement when not active. No one has been able to try it yet, but it could be a solution to what looked like a difficult obstacle to overcome.
However, PS5 fans have noticed that one key feature of the PS5 is not being used in Valorant on console, that could have arguably done a better job of allowing for precision movement. The PS5 controller features gyro technology, which can be used for a gyro aiming feature, where moving the controller in a specific way can translate to on screen crosshair movement. It’s been used in a few games such as The Finals and Fortnite before, and once you get your head around it can lead to very precise aim on a console that would have been perfect for Valorant.
However, Valorant on console will not feature gyro aiming because the development team wants to keep it a standard experience across all the consoles, and with Xbox controllers not having the same technology it would be unfair to add it for PS5 players and not those on the other side. This was explained by Coleman Palm, product management lead on Valorant gameplay, in a thread on X discussing the possibility of gyro aiming.
However, Palm would go on to say that the team could implement such a system in the future for PlayStation players, given that some working on the console port think it is a cool feature of the PS5.
One of the advantages of mainly covering PC games is that I don’t have to think about the pointless console wars that people love to wage, but its clear based on the reaction to this news that there is going to be a lot of back and forth from fans of each side over the upcoming Valorant console ports. Fortunately there’s only a few days until the beta kicks off and players can see for themselves how little it actually matters that this one small feature isn’t available.
