Valve has labelled PS3 "the most open console" on the market - following a deal with Sony to bring both Portal 2 and features of its Steam service to the platform.

Valve head honcho Gabe Newell appeared at the Sony E3 conference yesterday in Los Angeles to break the news. He shocked attendees by claiming that the PS3 edition of Portal 2 was the best console version available.

It was some turnaround for a man who once called the machine "a waste of everybody's time" - something for which he http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=221352">later apologised to owners of the console.

However, having failed to get its Steamworks service onto Xbox 360, it appears Valve's affections may be shifting.

"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."

When we asked how long ago Valve decided to develop for Sony's platform, he added:

"In terms of timing, it was a while ago. 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."

And in big news for PS3 fans - especially those that want to see the likes of Left4Dead on the platform - Johnson told us that older Valve titles could now be migrating onto Sony's device.

"Sure, it's possible," he said. "We're focused on Portal 2 right now though."

Can't blame them. It looks ace.

The game's out on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 next year

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=251921&skip=yes

May 19 they said

Valve wants PS3 “open like a Mac,” not “closed like a Gamecube”

What's LMAOSOA?????

awesome!!

It's weird... Gabe Newell appears to have lost an awful lot of weight since Tuesday...

Gabe Newell no longer fat confirmed

It's always been the most open console.  Valve only ever suggested disdain over the fact that it's not as open as something like Windows or OSX.

well Microsoft pissed off Valve in alot of ways with making them charge for L4D2"s The Passing and such. Valve wanted it free, Microsoft is to greedy and said no. I believe this works in Valve's favor as a "screw you Microsoft" type thing.

As he stated on the number of updates. Sony would probably have approved well over 5 updates. Even if Sony only accepted 15 updates for L4D2, Valve would have pointed out that Sony is more dev friendly.

Also you guys have no idea what Gabe's past looks like for past technologies. When dual-core processors were released he pissed and moaned that he would never develop for them because the extra core is useless. As of last year all of Valve's dev PCs are running quad-core Intels. See where things went? Gabe is a brilliant developer who is just lazy to learn new tech, once he learns it he loves the increased freedom. I wouldn't doubt during his "I hate the PS3" campaigns he had a PS3 dev kit on his own desk learning how to code the Cell.

Not cool if LFD comes because my 360 is quickly becoming the Halo and Gears console with nothing else exclusive that interests me.

He's still fat.

In retrospect, that weird quote about how they didn't want to support PS3 because it was turning into a less open platform like the gamecube -- that was just a trick to throw people off the scent before E3.  They must have decided to bring their stuff to the PS3 before that.

It's funny, of all the anti-PS3 points valve has made over the years, only the ones in the past few months didn't make any sense to me.  The PS3 a less open platform than the 360?  After Newell's announcement, it's pretty clear they were just making random (and contradictory) stuff up to build the E3 surprise.