There Was ‘No Intention’ to Make a Red Dead Redemption PC Version

Red Dead Redemption is one of the greatest open world games ever created and PC gamers have been longing for a PC release for many years. Sadly, it seems this was never up for consideration according to Red Dead Redemption’s lead multiplayer designer, Kris Roberts who said during a Twitch stream:

“I don’t think there was ever an intention to have a PC version of Red Dead Redemption. I was actually really shocked that they did a PC version of Grand Theft Auto V. Obviously in development, we were all PC based and had it running for win32 clients for the entire development. But as far as the licensing for the consoles and stuff, it was pretty much always going to be an X360 and PS3 title… we never really seriously talked about optimizing it for PC.”

The popularity of PC gaming has dramatically increased over the last decade so that could explain Rockstar’s initial dismissive nature towards the platform. Hopefully, the sales of GTA V on PC will provide enough encouragement to make them port the game to PC in the future. This is a possibility if Rockstar decides to make a HD remaster for the current-generation consoles.

I do find it a bit perplexing to hear Roberts’ surprise regarding Grand Theft Auto V. Firstly, the GTA franchise had strong roots on the PC and every single major release has eventually come to the platform. Not only that, PC gaming is already a resounding success and becoming more profitable than consoles. Therefore, to limit a huge title like GTA V to the consoles wouldn’t make business sense. Rockstar were very shrewd and managed to get certain customers to purchase the game on Xbox 360/PS3 then current-generation consoles and finally PC.

On another note, retail console games have a very short lifespan and years down the line, the majority of sales result in very little money due to the second hand market. PC gaming is a completely different beast with the modding community and Steam sales. I’m honestly finding Roberts’ analysis and general train-of-thought to be extremely contradictory.

Thank you The Dark Side of Gaming for providing us with this information.