Valve: “Sony’s console is the best for steam”

In one of the craziest turn of events in recent memory, Valve has not only swallowed a lot of its words, but has also come out and stated that the PlayStation 3 is pretty much the best console for its product — Steam. Of course, this wouldn’t be news as big as it is if it wasn’t for the fact that Gabe Newell had spent quite some time earlier in the generation deflating Sony’s balloon at any given opportunity to do so.

However, after Valve failed to secure a steam-like application for Microsoft’s Xbox 360, the company has now turned to the PlayStation 3 which it considered the “most open console on the market.”

“We’re a huge fan of open platforms in general,” Valve’s Erik Johnson told CVG today. “That’s something that we feel like is the right thing for customers. The PS3 looks like the most open of the consoles right now.

“Fundementally, we want all of our customers to be able to interact with each other – especially with a game like Portal 2, where people want to tell each other about Portal and have fun together.

“The work we’re going to do on Steam [on PS3], feature-by-feature, we don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like today. But we want to create that same kind of thing on PS3 [as we have on PC] – where people can talk to each other, know what they’ve played.”

That sounds crazy good for owners of Sony’s console who appreciate the way Valve has handled the PC demographic in the past for its product. It’s also something Valve realizes it handled poorly with the 360, but plans to handle much better for the PlayStation 3.

“The thing for us that made it make the most sense was talking to [Sony] about Steam.

“We shipped Team Fortress 2 on PC and the Xbox. We shipped over 120 updates on the PC and we’ve shipped less than five on the Xbox. That’s something that we feel like we’ve done a pretty poor job on and we don’t know how to fix it.

“There’s problems with shipping that many updates on the 360. For us, we kind of need to solve a problem with PS3 customers and hopefully Portal 2 does it.

“We want to make sure we’re doing it right and they’re gettin the kind of value welike to provide to our customers. We’re not interested in giving them a less than stellar experience.”

For those of you wondering if this means we’ll see previous titles from Valve pop up on the PlayStation 3 as well, you can probably hold your breath on that one. Valve did confirm that it is a possibility, but that right now they’re going to just focus on Portal 2. However, in the future, you may just see a Left 4 Dead title on the PS3 in the end.


Readers Comments (9)

  1. Just glad valve stopped bashing the ps3 ..

  2. Left. Four. Dead. Just thinking about it makes me laugh xD (In a good way).

  3. said it before and ill say it again

    FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK YYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

  4. I bet it was hard for Gabe to stand up and eat those words.. I know it is when I do it.

  5. Gabe Newell eating his own words is like him eating a salad: it never happens and it’s not fun for him to do at all.

    Can’t wait for Steam on PSN.

  6. LOL at Valve and their Sony hate last year…Now : bend over buddies. 😉

  7. more like LOL at all the people who are hating on gabe and then are like o wow cant wait for the game

    atso TFR its not steam, its just the support structure, so you get the patches and stuff.

  8. TheCodeNameisSnake June 17, 2010 @ 12:48

    @ Ryan “I bet it was hard for Gabe to stand up and eat those words.. I know it is when I do it.”

    Your absolutely right,i really like him now,we all shouldn’t say things like he learned his lesson and such…

    we should all embrace valve,for they can give us the games we cant play on ps3,{“LFD”}I imagine it would feel so good on my Sixaxis

  9. Why is some folks so excited about a possible LFD game on PS3, I tried just the demo on my 360 and it sucked big time, there ARE a lot better games out there folks. LFD is just a simple game with no more than standard graphics and annoying controls, basically a game that look more like a Gamecube game remake. I’ve seeing people talking great about this developers so they must have done some huge games but LFD ain’t one of them, at least in my view I guess…

Comments are closed.