Will Escape From Tarkov Come to Consoles?

Despite being primarily a PC gamer myself, I’m certainly not opposed to games having more diverse release frames. I think we’ve all experienced being that kid who missed out on a big name game because we didn’t have the right platform for it, and it’s not a fun position to be in. Of course, as much I’d like all games to be on all platforms, sometimes it simply can’t happen. Is Escape from Tarkov one of those cases?

Escape to Wider Demographics

Currently, Battlestate’s Escape from Tarkov is in closed beta, and has been since 2017. During its beta period, the game is only available to play on PC, specifically on Windows. While the game obviously isn’t 100% completed at the moment, at the time of writing, the devs haven’t announced any concrete plans or intentions to release the game outside of PC when it’s finished.

Will Escape From Tarkov Come to Consoles?

In conversations about whether Escape from Tarkov would even be viable for consoles, a common concern cited is that the game’s mechanics are simply too complicated to be accommodated by a typical controller. There’s some merit to this; after all, the laser-precision with which you can tweak your character’s aim would be excruciating to manage on a stick, to put it pleasantly, and that’s just one of the game’s numerous interface quirks. Though, some folks have countered that it is possible to make such a complicated layout work on a controller, and the proof is in DayZ.

Indeed, DayZ, a game in a similar developmental state to Escape from Tarkov, did manage a console release in 2019. That being said, compared to the PC version, the console versions of DayZ weren’t especially well received, and their playerbase has already dwindled considerably. 

So it’s not so much a question of whether Battlestate could port Escape from Tarkov to consoles as it is whether they should. For the time being, the answer remains no.