Valve: PS3 Orange Box Players "Got the Stepchild Version"

By Owen Good

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In an interview with CVG, Valve's Doug Lombardi says the experiences of putting Half-Life on PS2 and Orange Box on PS3 have put them off Sony development for the near future.

He doesn't complain about the differences in developing for one console, or PC, over another, but does say the PS3 versions of Valve products have been inferior to the original releases, and so the company's not interested in doing anything on that console again unless and until they can put something out that gives Sony players the same experience as PC and 360 users.

We look at it as if we were customers of this product, how would we want to be treated and what sort of product would we want out of it?

We've run a couple of experiments over the years of PlayStation in general; we did Half-Life on PS2 with an outside company and then we did Orange Box PS3 with an outside company. We weren't able to deliver the same type of product on PS3 and PS2 for that matter that we were on the 360 and PC.

[...]

Until we have the ability to get a PS3 team together, until we find the people who want to come to Valve or who are at Valve who want to work on that, I don't really see us moving to that platform.

We've kind of learned a lesson in that again, if we were customers of that product on PlayStation, we'd feel like we sort of got the stepchild version of the product while the guys on the PC and the 360 got the sweet version of it.

Translated, what it really means is there is no one inside Valve with any interest in PS3 development, and the company on the whole isn't interested in outsourcing any more ports after the experience with The Orange Box on PS3, which suffered some bad load times and framerate issues.

Still No PS3 Interest From Valve [CVG via TheSavePoints, thanks Meredith B.]

I hate valve.

You are going to get destroyed by PC fans

Wii would have gotten the Red-headed stepchild version. So don't be too upset.

I didn't buy my PS3 to play valve games (i don't think any body did), i always play them on my PC.

But am surprised that small developers can make great PS3 games but valve cant ....

I hate PC fans. Well, not all of them but the extremely childish and elitist ones.

I saw an article about Valve looking at some PS3 developers. It is pretty obvious they dont have the willingness to put some extra effort into PS3 games. But i think they know there is alot of money out there with the PS3 supporters so they are going after that money once they get some in house developers with the motivation to make a good game on PS3.

Well, it was an honest answer - and it was truthful. Plus, I agree, if someone is going to produce an inferior port, I would rather not have it. Especially in this case.

As for the people complaining that Valve wants to bring in people rather than learn the PS3 themselves, look at it this way...

They started their company to make games, not learn to program everything under the sun. However, if they can bring in people with experience then you get the best of both worlds - Valve game design with good PS3 coding.

And, for those of you bashing Valve, I pity you. They have done more for their genre then any company outside Id and 3DRealms (RIP).

It may have been truthful but its their loss. A loss that will continue to rise for as long as the PS3 installed base rises.

Didnt everybody already know this?