Splitgate competitive shooter heads to console after years of Steam success

The free shooting space is crowded and includes some of the biggest video game companies. But Call of Duty: Warzone, Fortnite, and Valorant don’t scare a newbie like Splitgate: Arena Warfare out of the market.

Developer 1047 Games is gearing up to expand its successful competitive shooter from PC to consoles. I spoke to 1047 co-founder and CEO Ian Proulx for the How Games Make Money podcast, which you can listen to below:

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Splitgate launches for console on July 27. And for Proulx and the 1047 team, it is an opportunity to continue the learning process on PC with a new audience.

“The whole process and all the thinking here was that we know we’re not going to get it right on day one. [on PC]”Said Proulx. “We know there is going to be a lot of learning. Let’s get it out and get it in the hands of real users as soon as we have our minimum viable product. And that’s how we’re going to learn, and over the last couple of years, that’s what we’ve been doing.

This methodology led to a very positive rating for Splitgate on PC, but it wasn’t because the team didn’t make mistakes. And one of them was trying to emulate the old 50-level ranking system from Halo 2.

“I was a great defender of [bringing] the Halo 2 system, ”said Proulx. “If you grew up playing Halo, you know what I’m talking about. I mean people loved it, and we would tell people that we are bringing the Halo 2 rating system down from 1 to 50 and people’s eyes would light up. They were like, ‘Oh, my God. Thank you. I can’t believe Halo got rid of them – they’re so dumb.

But the implementation of this ranking model made Splitgate worse.

“The truth is, the system sucks,” Proulx said. “It’s horrible to give you well-balanced games. What we saw was that 59% of our matches were absolute blowouts that were totally out of balance. And so we had to live with the times – we made a mistake. “

Now 1047 has figured out what Splitgate is and how to make it fun and compelling for PC gamers. The challenge now is to bring attention to the console when the game debuts.