Valve has recently announced that with the recent “success” of the Playstation 3, they’re open to re-evaluating their stance on development for the platform (the last Valve PS3 title, a port of The Orange Box, wasn’t handled by the company). To many people following the events of Left 4 Dead, Valve’s upcoming online zombie shooter, this could possibly mean the game’s arrival on the PS3. According to CVG, Valve’s Doug Lombardi was quoted as saying,
“We’re always evaluating what’s happening in the marketplace and certainly something that’s happening in the last couple of months is that Sony’s managed to sell some boxes. So whether or not you like developing for that platform, if they’ve got millions of people connected to that platform and buying their games you have to take it seriously. They’re in the race now, so we’ve got to re-evaluate that for what it is.
Which is fabulous and all, but Lombardi went on to state that the PC is their primary platform, their second being the Xbox 360. Also, in the “slight possibility” of their being a PS3 Left 4 Dead, it had “zero chance” of releasing in 2008 (talk about flipping off millions of potential customers right off the bat). Chalk up another timed release for the gaming cadres. Sadly, it appears Valve is still biased against the PS3, as evidenced by their “50-50 chance” development stand. Not that this is anything new, since Gabe Newell is as fond of Sony’s console as a vegan is of road-kill. Sample a few comments he made on the device in the past few years:
“PS3 is brand new and PS3’s online is kind of scary… It’s always the devil you don’t know that you’re the most scared of.”
“I’d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a do-over. Just say, ‘This was a horrible disaster and we’re sorry and we’re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it’. The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels. I think It’s really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted” [January 15th 2007]
“If Valve were to develop in-house for another format, it would be the Wii.” [February 21st 2008]
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