Monday, October 15th 2007
Gabe Newell Speaks on Porting Games to Consoles
The Orange Box released earlier this week, giving PC faithful and Xbox 360 gamers the best effort from Valve Software yet. Those who own only PlayStation 3s, however, will have to sit by the sidelines to watch other games rave over the innovations introduced in Portal, the fun of Team Fortress 2 and the sheer brilliance of Episode 2. If Valve Software could have had its way, the PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box would be on stores shelves right now - but the version of the game for Sony's console is actually in the hands the title's publisher, Electronic Arts.
While Valve Software handled the development and porting of The Orange Box to the Xbox 360, the games developer specifically chose not to handle the PlayStation 3 version. When Gabe Newell, one of Valve's founders, was asked by Edge magazine whether or not he still had any issue with the PlayStation 3's design architecture, he replied, "Absolutely. I think [PS3 is] a waste of everybody's time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There's nothing there that you're going to apply to anything else. You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they've created. I don't think they're going to make money off their box. I don't think it's a good solution." Newell also pointed out that porting the PC game to the Xbox 360 wasn't an effortless experience either, but that Microsoft's system was far more receptive to the developer's technologies. "We've learned that you can create a framework where all you need to do is recompile for each of those three platforms. You know, that's a sort of abstraction of our goal. With The Orange Box we could do that, so getting Left 4 Dead up on the 360 was like a day's worth of work. It requires a big technology investment to be able to do that. I was pretty skeptical that we would; I thought there was going to be more work than that." Although the PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box won't be handled by Valve, the developer likely would prefer to port all versions of its game in-house. "I think in the longer term we'll have the PS3 as well, but, to be honest, the biggest hole for us right now is the Wii," Newell added.
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Source:
DailyTech
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25 Comments on Gabe Newell Speaks on Porting Games to Consoles
EA ruins everything they can get their filthy hands on.
Half-Life 2 on PC with mouse and keyboard is what it was MADE for
most consoles gets owned by a midrange pc anyway
whats that cell thingy in PS3 used for?, just gathering dust?
you cant play games in 1920x1080 on a console
but you can do it with a midrange pc, you can even hock it up to a cinema screen and play it on a realy big screen in its native res, that cant be done with a console, but you need a highend gpu and sli/crossfire :laugh:
You lazy fat fuck...
Sincerely,
Sony.
Im not a fan of anything valve related so I dont feel Im missing out on anything owning a ps3. Its not washed up useless architectures, its just more advanced and more of a headache.
That is my two cents, i get pissed when i hear the ps3 is not capable. Polyphony ftw!
You can whine and moan about dev's being lazy, but its a business, and the faster they get a game out the more money there is to be made. The 360 facilitates this, and look at the excellent games that have come out.