Update: Official confirmation has been made.
Reports have been trickling in for months about a PS4 version of Marvel Rivals, but now there’s hard facts. As reported by Playstation Game Size, a PlayStation 4 version of heor extravaganza has surfaced in Sony’s backend data, signaling that NetEase may be about to extend the game to last-gen hardware. The studio has yet to comment, but being only a day out from Season 4’s trailer an ten days from launch (September 12), we’ll likely here official news soon.
Season 4 Is A Mid-September Trip To China
According to leaks, Marvel Rival’s Season 4 will be set in the mystical hidden city of K’un-Lun, China. Due Friday, September 12, the real question is who’s dropping next?
Dead Devils & Asgardian Marvels?
Update: Angela & Daredevil have been confirmed for season 4.
There have been endless character leaks for Marvel Rivals. Some will release, others probably not. Recent voice-line leaks point to four candidates likely to drop: Daredevil, Deadpool, Angela, and Captain Marvel.
But don’t expect NetEase to drop both Daredevil and Deadpool at the same time, nor Angela and Captain Marvel in a single beat. The studio has been following a steady “one man, one woman” release pattern to balance team compositions and keep cosmetics pipelines varied.
Daredevil vs. Deadpool
Both are likely Duelist-class heroes, and after Blade and Phoenix being Duelists too, it would be crazy for them to drop both. Fans have already been bemoaning the imbalanced roster, even calling it the reason for the player drop-off, so if we see either they’ll likely be in the second half of the season too.
Angela vs. Captain Marvel
Vanguard is the guess for both these heroes, and because of the dire need for more tanks, the winner will probably be the first to drop. Out of the two, Angela has had fewer leaks and less fans, making her the underdog.
So, our guess is that it’ll be Captain Marvel followed by Deadpool. Both are big names that will bring in players and kick off the launch of the PS4 version, plus Deadpool also has an accessory in-game already. That said, we’ve been wrong before (we predicted Phoenix but not Blade last season), so it’s still anyone’s game.
Update: X0Xleak has shared some iffy-info about Angela dropping first followed by Daredevil. They’ve said to take it with a grain of salt (meaning it’s just a rumour), but it does tip the scales a little.
Can PS4 Run It?
The idea of new players on last-gen hardware swamping the already muddy matchmaking doesn’t sound appealing to anyone. But, let’s be honest, Marvel Rivals isn’t a graphically dense game. So why does it run so poorly on some machines? The answer is simply optimisation. Most developers have few limitations with modern hardware, meaning they get sloppy and don’t squeeze every drop from the hardware (think things like back-face culling etc). So, the fact that there’s a PS4 version in development could be great news for all players (a more optimised game in general!), but it remains to be seen what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.
We’ll have more on this story tomorrow when the Season 4 trailer drops.
Header Image by @nakoneart
https://x.com/nakoneart/status/1891188220257255685
