Will Quake Champions Come To Consoles? Here's What Bethesda Says

The first gameplay footage of Quake Champions surfaced during this year's QuakeCon. Bethesda and id Softtware have so far only announced the game for PC. But will it come to consoles? Well, according to Bethesda's Pete Hines, it doesn't look like it.

Gamespot is reporting that Bethesda's VP of marketing, Pete Hines, explained to them that it's possible Quake Champions could come to home consoles, but at the moment they have a goal and that goal requires specs that the current PS4 and Xbox One can't handle at the moment, saying...

120hz means 120 frames per second, if you have a monitor that supports 120hz refresh rate and if you have a GPU powerful enough to maintain uncapped frame-rates at up to 120fps. It's a somewhat high-end arena shooter designed for a niche market. This is similar to what Hines mentioned before about the game possibly not coming to consoles.

Hines was also asked if the Xbox Scorpio and PlayStation Neo could change around the scenario and enable id Software to port Quake Champions over to the newer consoles without a loss in fidelity. Hines side-stepped the question by saying it's still too early to comment about them.

Some people think this is just marketing speak and that Quake Champions could run fine on the Xbox One and PS4. Others think that this is limiting the potential sales for the game, both on PC and for home consoles due to id Software's lofty goals.

One thing to keep in mind is that the original Crysis and the expansion pack sold 4.3 million copies on PC alone, according to Crytek, before being downgraded and ported to the Xbox 360 and PS3. Not only that, the game helped force a lot of PC gamers to buy new, high-end hardware because everyone wanted to be able to benchmark the game on the ultra settings. Like the old saying goes, the software sold the hardware.

If id Software's goal is to actually make a groundbreaking, market-changing game like Crytek did with the original Crysis, then it would make sense that they would focus all their efforts on making Quake Champions take full advantage of the PC hardware.

Based on the short gameplay footage that has been released, the rocket-jumping, twitch reflexes, smoother frame-rates and lightning fast gameplay are all present. But is it really enough to justify PC exclusivity? If the developers are gunning for physics-based destructibility, new rendering techniques in the id Tech 6 and VR support, then I can definitely see how a console port would be unfeasible.

While Bethesda didn't mention that VR would be a prime focus of Quake Champions, usually gunning for 120fps in today's market kind of hints at the possibility of VR, since you need 90fps for a solid play experience without getting nausea or suffering from VR sickness.

In all likelihood, if the game doesn't really push the boundaries on PC hardware then don't be surprised if a 60fps console port arrives sometime down the line. If, however, id Software is actually aiming to push boundaries and they want to be the Crysis of eighth gen, then maybe the game will have to forgo home consoles. But as Pete Hines mentioned, with the PlayStation Neo and Xbox Scorpio on the horizon, it's too early to tell what's going to happen.