A Red Dead Redemption PC port could still be on the cards

Rockstar's original Red Dead Redemption can seem rather humble next to the rootin' tootin' excellence of Red Dead Redemption 2, but it looms larger in my memory, albeit not for the best reasons. The original Xbox 360/PS3 game launched with a tidal wave of bugs, some of them game-ending. One particular collection of technical gremlins trapped me on a farm during the prologue. Having sat through some cutscenes, I found myself at the centre of a strange spacetime distortion redolent of the other world in Neil Gaiman's Coraline. If I tried to leave the farm the simulation slowly broke down, with movement consisting of weird fragmentary teleports.

I saw a distant rider stop-starting through a canyon with his own hat darting through the air behind him. I followed the man for as long as I could, before tumbling through the terrain into uncreated space. Proper Lynchian stuff. Red Dead Redemption 2 had its share of bugs and glitches, but none of them quite as captivating as this. Still, it would have been nice to see the world beyond the farm, and that was my first thought when Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar announced a new Red Dead Redemption port, for release on 17th August. Sadly, however, the port appears to be PS4 and Switch-only for the moment, though a PC release might happen if the stars align.

IGN's Rebekah Valentine asked about the prospect of a PC port during a Take-Two Interactive earnings call with CEO Strauss Zelnick this week. He didn't confirm either way, but had this to say of Rockstar's porting strategy in general:

"It depends on the vision that the creative teams have for a title, and in the absence of having a powerful vision, for something that we would do with a title, we might bring it in its original form, we've done that, and in certain instances we might remaster or remake, so it really depends on the title and how the label feels about it, the platform, and what we think the opportunity is for consumers."

I'm going to chalk this up as a "maybe".

The RDR port is controversial for other reasons - it lacks multiplayer and costs a fair whack at $50, which Zelnick insisted is "the commercially accurate price" during the earnings call, but seems a bit much given that the original game is still playable via backwards compatibility on Xbox.

Rockstar's approach to porting stuff to PC is, I think it's fair to say, belated. Back in 2018, then-vid bud Matthew Castle (RPS in peace) was so piqued by Red Dead Redemption 2's on-going absence on PCs he made a video of the best Western games to play instead.