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Apparently Rockstar had no intention of bringing Red Dead to PC

One of the best console games to launch last generation was Red Dead Redemption, there was just one problem- it never came to the PC. Apparently, Rockstar didn't even give a PC port serious consideration during the development process, according to the game's lead multiplayer designer.

Kris Roberts worked on Red Dead Redemption and while it was admittedly developed in a PC environment, the game was “pretty much always” going to be console-only. The former Rockstar employee was also pretty surprised that Rockstar brought Grand Theft Auto V to the PC.

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“I don't think there was ever an intention to have a PC version of Red Dead Redemption”, Robets said during a Twitch livestream. “I was actually super 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 a Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 title. To the best of my recollection, we never even seriously talked about optimizing it for PC.”

There has been some concern that Rockstar is moving away from PC games over the last couple of years, particularly since the company refused to talk about a PC port of GTA V for an entire year after the game's launch. However, we did eventually get the game and it turned out to be extremely well polished, so hopefully whatever phase Rockstar went through with Red Dead Redemption has since passed.

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KitGuru Says: There are plenty of people who would probably still be interested in a PC version of Red Dead Redemption, including myself since I didn't play more than a couple of hours on console. Did any of you play Red Dead Redemption back in the day? Would you still play it if it came to PC all these years later? 

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12 comments

  1. I played it for hours on end on 360, and if it came to PC I would definitely get it to play again, I really miss it since I sold my 360 roughly 3 and a half to 4 years ago.

  2. F*ck consoles, they’re a waste of hardware. By all means make mini pcs with the same hardware & develop games that’ll run on the low specs; but consoles – smh – it’s like buying an oven that can’t cook a roast, or a toaster that can’t cook pop-tarts.

  3. GTA V isn’t anywhere near as polished as everyone pretends. It’s a decent port, but not a ‘version’ as they claimed: that’s why we have the horrible console UI, the lobbies, no proper game search, horrible flight controls, and so on. The port was an afterthought and people bought into the circlejerk about ‘waiting longer for a better game’. In the end we got a decent port, but it was two years late. Two years. There have also been major and constant performance and crashing issues across cards. Rockstar don’t care about the PC. I don’t know why, but that’s obvious.

  4. Never played it to be honest. To me it all comes down to money more and more developers are dishing out console versions of games non stop and the PC versions are either no where to be seen or in this case isn’t even talked about. Considering they develop games on a PC you’d think they would say to themselves why not do a PC version? Take COD for example (one of the biggest if not the biggest cash cow), the originals I did enjoy but once they started getting released for consoles and the PC versions looked like something that was developed 10 years previous I lost all interest. Black OPs 3 for example looks to me like it should be released for the 360 not XboxOne or PS4 or even a low spec PC.

    I don’t have the best PC by any stretch of the imagination or even a machine most people would consider ‘upto date’ but I’d still rather fork out money for a good game on it than I would buying a console – subscriptions – games and dealing with screaming kids or people with a mic that is so bad they might aswell tie a string to a paper cup.

    When they do a ‘rushed’ console port in my opinion its usually not worth playing. Just look at the latest batman game and say I’m wrong. Sure they are passing the buck to the company they ‘outsourced’ it to but if the main developer gave a monkeys about their games they would have tested it.

    I agree with the other comment about GTA V. Not as polished as people give it credit for. I bought that for £30something and have played less than 20 hours. Not because it looks bad but more due to the fact I have yet to play a single game without cheaters ruining it. Any game I join regardless of time of day I end up in a lobby with people throwing money at me, killing me randomly from across the map, glitching vehicles to spawn on top of me and so on and so on. They simply just don’t care about the PC community on which their franchises or even names were made. Well very few care that is …

  5. Amen

  6. Well, hate them or not this is the reality we exist in. Consoles form a massive part of the market share and each platform has it’s own corporate representation, advertising and muscle. the fact that without this that PC has assumed the market share it does have is testament to the superiority of the platform. The problem is from a strictly business standpoint, focusing on console versions is the right thing to do.

    But yeah I agree with James, the GTAV port was massively overrated. Yes, it was better from R* usual track record but then so would the game just being a meatspin.com e-bomb. myriad connection and performance issues, horrible flight controls and literally no community support, etc, etc, etc,

  7. I would play the fuck out of a RDR PC version.
    Played it through back in my dirty peasant days and I have to hand to rockstar, they can tell compelling stories, whilst simultaneously making you care about the worst human beings imaginable. NOW STOP KILLING YOUR PROTAGONISTS LIKE DAVID CAGE’S FUCKING DOG.

  8. Very well said, and I still havent played red dead, im ok with that.

  9. I have, several times, and I loved it. It would have been the perfect PC game. The fact they never brought it out, and never even bothered to offer a reason is damning enough (FYI, the old excuse of it being too messy code and hard to port has never been substantiated with any evidence or linked to any R* employee, so we can assume it’s just made up). It was the perfect potential PC game, with no technical bars to porting it, there was a huge potential audience, and yet we didn’t see it. There’s something we don’t know about behind the scenes at R* because that doesn’t make sense. I don’t even think MS/Sony paying them not to release it on PC can explain it. There’s some big reason that prevents them doing this stuff.

  10. ive been a PC gamer for about a decade after switching from the PSX, however im considering getting a PS4 and a second hand 360 simply because of console exclusives, Red Dead Redemption among them. i wish rockstar would port it to the PC before i spend about £60 on a second hand console

  11. Well, PC *is* the superior platform. It’s cheaper part-for-part, potentially a lot more powerful (or less if you’ve got less money), much cheaper for games with free online, it has a vastly larger library of games, far more functionality and flexibility in everything from form factor to warranties to software. It’s objectively far superior to the consoles, and the market share *is* proof of that. The difference is that because there’s no single company in charge of PC gaming (Valve doesn’t even get close) there’s no marketing force or unified strategy. PC gaming companies are competing *against each other*, not spending their money selling the platform in general. It’s as simple as that. Marketing for the console platforms as a whole plus the financial nous to buy things like exclusives.

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