Will we ever see Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC? Rockstar’s open-world Western game Red Dead Redemption 2 launched to huge acclaim in late October, with a newly-launched online mode now in beta alongside the epic-sized single-player campaign. So far, however, the game is only available on Xbox One and PS4.
While that’s not exactly a restrictive release, committed PC players have been left twiddling their thumbs in the vague hope of a PC port coming down the line.
Players hungry for a high-spec or 4K experience can opt to play the game on the PS4 Pro or Xbox One X, but there’s nothing quite like a souped-up PC rig to bring out the finer details and see what Rockstar’s game engine can really do.
So if you don’t have a console from Sony or Microsoft, what are your prospects for getting your hands on Read Dead 2 any time soon? We’ve run through all the latest rumors pointing to a PC release, and made our best guess as to when we’d expect it to land.
Will we see Red Dead 2 on PC?
Rumors kicked off in mid-October about a possible Red Dead 2 PC release, after the online retailer MediaMarkt listed a PC version of the game on its website, with a placeholder date of December 31, 2019. The listing has since been pulled, however.
Things heated up again after a LinkedIn profile for a Rockstar employee appeared to list credits as a programmer on the PC version of the game – though this, again, was amended after the media attention that attracted.
The firmest clues we have appeared when Rockstar released a mobile / tablet companion app alongside the new Red Dead game, mainly as a hub for viewing in-game stats, journal entries, and map locations (see image below).
Some savvy data-mining, though, contained references to PC-quality graphics settings – shadow quality, grass rendering, and the like – as well as lines explicitly naming PC, such as ‘PARAM_companionAutoConnectIpPC’ or ‘CommandIsPcVersion(void)’. You can see the full list on Rockstar Intel.
There’s also a reference to ‘Oculus’, which can only really refer to VR capability for the game. Given the option to play the entire game in an immersive first-person perspective, virtual reality would be a natural fit – and Red Dead 2 VR would be most at home on a dedicated Oculus or PC-bound headset.
Red Dead Redemption 2: ripe for VR?
Red Dead 2 on PC: release date
So when could we see Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC? At this point Rockstar is unlikely to make an announcement before the end of 2018. If anything, an announcement in January could be a savvy move to keep up interest in the new year.
While 2010’s Red Dead Redemption never came to PC, previous Rockstar games like GTA IV or GTA V both took around six months to make the jump to PC after their initial console launch. So that means we could be looking at an April/May 2019 launch date this time around.
Given the scale of the the open-world game, it’s not wholly surprising for a PC port to follow a few months after – it takes a lot of work to get the game running on different systems. But the longer PC gamers have to wait, the less likely they are to maintain their anticipation.
And if the game gets delayed too long, it may end up competing with CD Projekt Red’s similarly open-world Cyberpunk 2077, which is expected to release in early 2019. Sure, the open plains of Rockstar’s Western seem a world away from a neon Blade Runner-esque dystopia – but gamers only have so much time on their hands, and both developers are unlikely to want to be competing directly.
Let’s face it, if you’re a PC gamer, there are too many games to play and not enough money in our wallets to buy everything that catches your eye. That is, unless you manage to catch the right discounts in the Steam Sale.
The Steam marketplace has a massive library of PC titles, and, like a lot of other online retailers – Amazon comes to mind – runs ongoing sales and deals on countless games throughout the year. The biggest savings, however, are to be had in Steam’s seasonal sales.
We just saw the end of the weeklong Steam Autumn Sale 2018, timed to coincide with the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales bonanza. As per, we saw a wide array of discounts across the PC platform’s library of titles, on everything from indie darlings to AAA tentpoles.
The next big sale will be the Steam Winter Sale 2018, commencing on December 20 on the Steam Store. While there are always a smattering of 20-40% price cuts, you’ll also find a good number of half-price or 75% on certain games and franchises, while 90% savings aren’t unheard of either – and are often the best ways to get your hands on a lot of add-on or DLC content bundled in for no extra cost.
In the meantime, this guide will run you through how to get the best out of the Steam Sales throughout the year – and the best deals and game discounts in the Steam Winter Sale when it arrives.
The Steam Winter Sale will go live on December 20 at 9:55am BST / 1:55am PST / 4:55 EST / 8:55pm AEDT and will run until January 3 at 10:05am BST / 2:05am PST / 5:55am EST / 9:05pm AEDT.
If you can’t wait til then, Steam will be running regular daily and weekly sales throughout December as usual.
How to get the best deals in the Steam Winter Sale 2018
Whichever way you approach a particular Steam Sale, you’re guaranteed to have the chance to pick up some top gaming titles at great prices.
Finding bargains isn’t too difficult, but there are a few techniques and tricks that are worth using if you want to get the most out of the sales.
Use your Steam Wishlist: Fill it up with all the games you’re interested in picking up, and you’ll be alerted the moment they go on sale, and by how much.
Bundles are great: Publishers often pull their titles together in sale mega-packs, ramping up the savings to even greater heights. If there’s a suite of titles from a publisher like Square Enix or Activision that you’ve never played before, this is the best – and cheapest – way to bag them all at once. As you’d imagine, the value diminishes if you’ve already got a few bundled titles in your library.
Highlighted deals are where the real savings are: The majority of the Steam store back-catalogue will get some sort of price cut, but it’s the ‘Highlighted’ deals (the ones promoted on the Steam front splash page) that tend to be more heavily discounted. These are the ones where you may fall into impulse-buy territory. Which leads us on to our next tip…
Only buy what you’ll actually play right away: Once those 75% off signs start floating around, you’re going to want to break open the piggy-bank. But the Steam Sales of yesteryear have proved that our desire for overflowing game libraries leaves us with more titles than we could ever humanly play. Save some cash, and only grab the ones you’re really going to play – keep in mind that if you wait a while, the games will almost certainly get cheaper as they get older.
Use this browser extension: Want to make sure you’re getting a good deal? Use the Enhanced Steam browser extension. This gives you a historical look at the price of all Steam games, letting you see just how many pennies have been saved.
The best Steam Sale deals of days gone by
Gone but not forgotten, here’s our collection of all the best deals we’ve seen in days gone by. Use them as a point of reference for what you should be expecting – or, you know, lament the ones that got away.
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection: This Borderlands bundle packed in a huge amount of content for an almost unheard-of 94% discount. Sure, some of that content was filler – costume packs, small add-on quests and the like, alongside larger expansions and the full Borderlands 2 and Pre-Sequel games – but boy did you get your money’s worth.
Tomb Raider franchise: The iconic explorer has seen a huge transformation since her debut outing in ’96, moving from polygonal poster-girl to complex, conflicted heroine. And with 70-90% discounts across the entire platforming series, this was the perfect time to join her on that journey…
Left 4 Dead 2: Valve’s cooperative zombie shooter Left 4 Dead 2 pits four survivors against the undead horde, and has an absolute blast doing it. With procedurally-altered campaigns, too, the game is smart enough to vary the challenge depending on how (and how well) you play. And at 90% off RRP, it was basically free…
Shadow of Mordor bundle: Perhaps the definitive Lord of the Rings video game, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was lauded on release for its stellar combat, open-world action, and an intelligent Nemesis system that. If 50 Game of the Year awards weren’t enough to convince you, a hefty 70% discount on the Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War bundle certainly should have been.
The Witcher 3: Inarguably the game of 2015, The Witcher 3 is also now widely considered the best RPG of all time. A sprawling dark fantasy epic, it’s a beautiful game, and one that’s a great showpiece for your souped-up gaming PC too.
And, with the Game of the Year Edition being heavily discounted in the Steam Summer Sale, it was a fantastic way to jump into this monumental game, and get all of its DLC at a discount too.
What games will be in the Steam Winter Sale 2018?
First off, you shouldn’t expect brand-new games to get the really steep discounts that have become synonymous with the Steam sales. You may see a 5%, or even 10% discount on games that have been recent big hits, but if they’re still new enough to be spinning money without needing a price cut, don’t expect that to change now that the sale is here.
But, with the exception of the newer titles, pretty much the entire store receives a 25% discount, if not higher, with a select few seeing a massive 90% off the list price. While the store now highlights what Valve considers the best deals, it’s worth noting that flash and community sales are no longer in the mix, so feel free to pick a title on sale when you like – its discounted price will stand for the duration of the sale.
Of course, there are other gaming stores out there, and it’s worth checking their wares too, to see if you can’t bag an even bigger bargain elsewhere. GOG.com is a great place to start, and if you’re platform-agnostic and looking for multi-platform titles, keep an eye on the PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Deals with Gold offers, too.
Or… spend no money at all on the best free games to play right now!
Just because Black Friday is behind us, doesn’t mean you’ve missed your chance to get a great Nintendo Switch deal or discounted PS4 bundle. Neither of those consoles saw any spectacular Black Friday discounting – you could even say they were pretty poor considering some of the deals we’ve seen in the past.
So naturally we’re super pleased to see some fresh deals today over on ebay via a fantastic 15% off almost everything discount code. You can use this code on 20 different categories at ebay as long as it costs £20 or more – but we’ve picked out a couple of suggested games console deals.
First up we’ve got a sub-£200 offer for a new PS4 Slim with FIFA 19. And there’s also a fantastic discount on the Special Pokemon Let’s Go! Pikachu Nintendo Switch console for just under £285 – that’s a massive discount too. Or if you just want a Switch on its own, we’ve got you covered.
The ebay discount code you need to use at checkout is: PRESENTS. There’s a minimum spend of £20 and a maximum discount of £50. And it can only be used once per person.
The code expires Thursday 29th November at 23:59. There’s not a chance that these console deals will still be in stock by then though! We’ve highlighted the best PS4 and Switch deals below to use the code on and also linked to the other categories you where you can use the ebay voucher code.
Shop by category at ebay for 15% off with ‘PRESENTS’
Having created the compact disc, and steered the gaming world away from cartridges to that format, it now looks like Sony could be embracing the cartridge once again.
As first spotted by German technology outlet TechTastic, Sony has patented a new cartridge format for storing video games. The patent went through official channels in South Korea last year, and was published by the Korea Intellectual Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS) earlier this month.
Sony’s filing includes very little information about the product itself, but plenty of imagery that’s quite telling.
The patent application is blatantly titled ‘Electronic Game Cartridge’, and depicts something that looks like a cross between a classic PlayStation memory card and a Nintendo Switch game cartridge. We’re not sure what the hole toward the top is for, and that connection port seems awfully proprietary.
It’s all a little confusing, as this is assumed to be a video game storage format. Every cartridge product used to store game data within the past several years has been metal contact-based, as with SD cards. This port suggests a different method of transmitting data, looking something like HDMI or the classic 40-pin iPhone port.
It’s hard to avoid making a connection between this new Sony patent and a previous one. Back in early 2017, the company published a patent for a handheld game console that looked awfully similar to the Nintendo Switch.
Now, we see a patent for a video game storage format, one that’s solid state and therefore can take a tumble, and which is ideal for a portable console.
Plus, while we’ve noted the apparently retrograde nature of Sony’s move to create a new cartridge-based game storage medium, it’s not as if Sony is new to the format – the ill-fated PlayStation Vita employed flash-based media for its games.
There’s no way of knowing whether Sony intends to deliver on these patents, but it does seem like the company has spent considerable time and money at least investigating the possibility of re-entering the handheld gaming arena.
Here’s hoping that Sony’s thirst for revenge drives it to develop a compelling handheld gaming option – because the Vita was actually pretty fantastic where it counted.
The launch date of the PlayStation Classic is fast approaching, perfectly timed for the holiday season, when it will ostensibly drown us in wistful memories of gaming past. Nostalgia is a powerful resource, after all – as shown by the sellout success of Nintendo’s NES Classic and SNES Classic mini-consoles.
But look a little closer at Sony’s offering, and it looks like a fudge job, compiled well after Sony decided to jump on the nostalgia bandwagon. It’s as if Sony was dead set on offering something in the mini-console market before actually checking whether it had anything to offer – which, as it turns out, is not all that much.
Before we pick out more specific examples from the PlayStation Classic line-up, it’s worth a general comparison via our sister site, GamesRadar. Cross-referencing the PS1 Classic’s 20 games with GR’s list of the 25 best PS1 games, the PS1 Classic has five titles that make the cut: Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, Tekken 3 and Ridge Racer Type 4.
The SNES Classic’s 21-game roster, meanwhile, has a whopping 19 games in GamesRadar’s 25 best SNES games – which doesn’t even take into account the never-before released Star Fox 2 that comes bundled in with the console; a tasteful bonus for those who buy into the console’s nostalgic 90s throwback.
Tekken 3 (1997)
Cynics may dismiss mini-consoles as a gimmick, a false collection of software that could be easily emulated without the fuss around a controlled hardware release. But a lineup of 21 mostly all-time-classic SNES games at $4 / £3 / AU$6 a pop, complete with a lovingly designed replica of the console to tap into those joyous childhood memories, represents fine value for money.
So how did the PS1 Classic end up fronted by such a ragtag lineup? Did Rayman and Mr. Driller at some point displace Crash and Spyro as PS1 mascots? Is Cool Boarders 2 really the snow-capped peak of PS1 sports games?
Part of the problem is that one of the selling points that made the original PlayStation such a maverick, edgy console in the 90s has come back to haunt the Classic.
The PS1 was the first console to really exploit all that extra capacity afforded by the CD medium (no offence to the Sega CD and Atari Jaguar CD), defining itself by the licensed music blaring out of its best games.
Classics like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Wipeout and Gran Turismo – all of which should’ve been shoe-ins for the PS1 Classic – would’ve therefore faced impossible licensing obstacles to make it over.
Crash and burn
Of course, the elephants in the room are Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. With two of the console’s most recognisable, nostalgia-saturated mascots have recently received successful remasters courtesy of Activision, which has owned the IPs since 2008, it’s likely that the publisher wanted to keep the precious currency of ‘Nostalgia Feels’ to itself.
With the Spyro Reignited Trilogy and the PS1 Classic coming out so close together, the publisher may not have wanted a low-polygon version of the purple dragon flitting around and taking attention away from the remastered one.
Perhaps Sony thought that gamers’ desire to replay the original Crash and Spyro would’ve been obviated by the glossy remasters. That would’ve been a big mistake, overlooking (or wilfully ignoring) the fact that people buy into mini consoles specifically for the retro feel of old favorites, without the spit-and-polish of modern, high-definition graphics.
The same excuses can’t be applied to the absence of Sony’s own IP Ape Escape, but the classic platformer would have required Sony to upgrade the controllers to DualShocks – extra manufacturing costs that Sony evidently didn’t want to splash out.
Unless there actually is nostalgic value to the awkwardness of playing 3D games using a d-pad? The only memories it brings back for me are those of chafed inner thumb joints. A neat innovation here would’ve been to offer compatibility with the fundamentally-similar DualShock 4 controller, but perhaps in-built Bluetooth would’ve been too much of an expense given that even the games list feels awfully scrimpy.
Nintendo understands that a mini-console needs to capture the types of games that console was renowned for. The original PS1 was where survival horror and JRPGs really came to life, using the crisp soundtracks and economical 3D graphics (aided by those lovely pre-rendered backgrounds) to immerse us like never before.
Yet both these genres are poorly represented on the PS1 Classic.
Wild Arms (1996)
Sony came to an understanding with Square Enix over Wild Arms and Final Fantasy VII – a marquee title that’s synonymous with the console and a vital marketing tool. But when it came out in 1997, Final Fantasy VII marked the beginning of a JRPG golden age on the PS1, driven mostly by Squaresoft (now Square Enix).
Square’s catalog alone had games like Xenogears, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX, Legend of Mana, Chrono Cross and Vagrant Story, yet all Sony obtained from the publisher was the most recognisable – if not necessarily the best – game in this illustrious chain.
It’s interesting to note that another Square RPG, SaGa Frontier, is coming to the Japanese PS1 Classic. Despite not being terribly well rated, this game was a huge hit in Japan at the time, indicating that marketing was perhaps a stronger factor than quality when curating this lineup.
Survival horror is another omission, fronted by Resident Evil: Director’s Cut and nothing else. Attempts to bring Resident Evil 2 may have run aground due to the upcoming remake, but the original is on a technical level the weakest of the lot. It’s not unwelcome, but would have worked better as a novel accompaniment to more polished titles like Resident Evil 3, Capcom’s other survival horror classic Dino Crisis, or the eternally unsettling Silent Hill.
Resident Evil: Director’s Cut (1997)
The Japanese PS1 Classic at least gets RPG-horror hybrid Parasite Eve (also from Square Enix); a great game based on a bestselling Japanese novel that failed to gain much traction in Western markets.
While we’re in Capcom’s catalog, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo makes the cut, which makes you wonder why one of greatest fighting games of all time, Super Street Fighter Alpha 3, didn’t make it to the PS1 Classic as well. Maybe Capcom didn’t want to license it out so soon after including it in the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, but that doesn’t hold up too well when you consider that the SNES Classic managed to get its hands on Super Street Fighter II Turbo.
An incomplete legacy collection
The PS1 Classic’s lineup is one shaped by lost licenses, conflicts of interest with publishers, and what seem like lazy missteps. The included iterations of Twisted Metal and Grand Theft Auto aren’t the strongest PS1 offerings in their respective series, while the notoriously shoddy port of the original Rainbow Six looks like filler, carried by brand recognition alone.
Maybe I’d feel differently if I had the PS1 Classic in front of me, hypnotized by that deep, synthesized whir as the PS logo appeared on my screen for the first time. But really that’s just a nostalgia trigger, like the physical console itself and its arcane controllers; empty symbols that don’t recreate the quality of gaming they once stood for.
Sony isn’t entirely to blame, and it may also be a hint that procuring stellar game lineups for these mini-consoles will get harder the more recent the console. From the PS1 onwards, licensing became common practice, and third-party publishers and developers played a bigger part in shaping console game libraries.
The N64 Classic, for example, may struggle procuring Rare games like Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark and Goldeneye. The current rage for remastering games from earlier 3D eras, too, is sure to impact publishers’ decisions on whether they want to dish the originals out to these mini-console packages.
The PS1 Classic’s struggles are compounded by a lack of upscaling beyond 720p, and the unavoidable fact that even its few classic games are from that pioneering 3D era that simply hasn’t aged as well as the 16-bit generation before it or the 128-bit era (PS2) after.
While Sony’s troubles putting this together are appreciable, the product they’ve released to market is still a poor simulacrum of the original console, and one that fails to grasp what made the PS1 so special. It feels destined to succeed, even if it deserves to fail. The latter scenario would at least lead to more diligence on Sony’s part when the inevitable PS2 mini-console rolls around.
In addition to Nyko’s Dualies – a pair of Joy-Con alternatives due out next month – the third-party gaming accessory manufacturer has revealed it will be releasing a number of other products for the Nintendo Switch before the end of the year. The entire range can be pre-ordered from Nyko’s website and Amazon.
Despite Nintendo’s strong hardware sales as we enter this year’s holiday period, there are a number of analysts who believe the Japanese company will fall short of its target to ship 38 million units by March 2019.
According to the average of eight analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg, the Switch is on track to ship 35 million units by March next year. It is not as devastating as it sounds, as it is only three million behind Nintendo’s forecast.
Yesterday, it was revealed Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go was the fourth best-selling product during the Black Friday sales. Adobe has now released information to highlight the most popular products in the US on Cyber Monday. In more positive news for Nintendo, the Switch was the third best-selling product on the list.
Like most things from the late ’80s and early ’90s, the 2D side-scrolling beat ’em up is no longer particularly cool or relevant. Sure, a certain type of ageing nostalgist (guilty as charged) will get excited about Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle or Streets of Rage 4, but the kids have long since moved on to something else. And let’s face it, the kids were probably right to. To genre outsiders, your average side-scrolling beat ’em up is shallow, repetitive and deeply dumb – and Mother Russia Bleeds is nothing if not an average side-scrolling beat ’em up, with an extra side order of unpleasantness.
You could always rely on the beat ’em up greats to insert a brief splash of colourful cartoon violence into a drab afternoon. Your muscle-bound hero may have been laying into a group of goons with a length of pipe, but the likes of Final Fight and Streets of Rage had all the grit and cynicism of an ’80s cartoon. Mother Russia Bleeds takes a rather different approach. It’s self-consciously dark and ‘Mature’. That’s ‘Mature’ as in the old cinematic rating, rather than the non-capitalised sense of the word, with the kind of hyper-violent flavour and obsession with grimy dystopia that only a mopey teenager would view as ‘adult’.
Just last week, Bandai Namco announced that Super Robot Wars T would be headed to Nintendo Switch. Just in case that announcement wasn’t enough to have you foaming at the mouth with excitement, a whole batch of screenshots has now been shared to show the variety of series on offer.
If you’re unaware, Super Robot Wars is a tactical RPG franchise featuring crossovers between a variety of mecha anime series released in Japan. We have a list of new and returning anime series for you right here if you want to know more; otherwise, feel free to delve into the new screens below.
