Well for those who dont know, Valves latest installment Portal 2 (releasing soon) will have full Steamwork support for the PS3 which basically makes the PC and PS3 the same (but the level creation/modding i believe). Steamworks is an Valve tech they use in there Steam platform for Digital distribution. 

What Steamworks allow for the PS3:

Cross platform play: PS3 players can play with PC and Mac players 

Cross Platform chat: ability to chat though steam works 

Cloud base save shortage: ability to store your data on an cloud server to enable to play on PS3 and then continue on PC/MAC or vice versa. 

persistent updates: similar to Naughty Dogs auto sync in uncharted 2 were instead of having those patches interupt you launching or unable to play offline while connected to PSN are solved as patches are done while loading the multiplayer section.

Also all PS3 version get an steam version free (PC/MAC) included. 

Now what i can kinder get out of this is that SONY saw what MS was doing with there windows live with some cross platform stuff, and is looking to do it themselves but use Valves steamworks instead (since alot of 3rd party companies uses valves steam) and licence it from valve but first test it on Portal 2 before rolling it out on other future titles. 

What i believe this would do is that we might see more of this in other PC/PS3 games. 

All i can say is that they are making what will be an great game better with this and i expect Valves Half Life 3 to do the same and maybe Left 4 dead to do as well. 

Future Valve games, I'm sure.  Doubtful for anything else.  Any third party would be sacrificing cash by having to pay fees to both Valve and Sony per game sold.

i was thinking that sony would pay valve the licencing fees to have Steamworks on PS3 and then it would come in the licening fee package that sony charges for getting your game on PS3

edit: what i just noticed is that In order to unlock the free copy of Portal 2, you have to link your accounts. Meaning sony must be launching steam works on PSN and having steam and PSN. 

I would not be that sure. Do you know why steam works is possible on PS3 and not on 360? PSN does not provide game server hosting and need to be handled by devlopers, Valve would need to build some server base for Portal 2.... by why they need to do that if the already got steam that handles online game? Live on other hand do and MS forced Valve to use Live insted.

In other words if you plan to develop PS3 game with multiplayer you not only need to pay Sony for licencing, but you need to take a cost servers to handle multiplayer. So whatever you pay for own servers  or pay for SteamWorks it will cost you anyway, not to mention first solution is probably more expensive to mantain then 2nd when lot of stuff is handled by Valve already. Also what about multiplats that already use Steam Works on PC? I think i dont need to tell you that CoD series switched to Steamworks since MW2 and think how cool would be if next CoD had Steamworks features too. 

I only see benifit for all th sides of interest, Developers have cheaper better hosting and dont need to care about mantaining them, Valve got more users from PS3 in there system and they can provide there services for them and Sony got happy users with better online expirence on there platform 

Not actually I think Steam for PS3 will be like regular Steam. You will get a code with your games which after you input them they are tied to your pS3/Steam account making so you cannot resell them. I hope I am wrong.

Yea on both things, you misunderstand something with code part :p Each Portal 2 on PS3 will have code for PC version, you dont need to use that code at all to play PS3 version. You can easily link any PSN account with any Steam account any time you want (maybe only save game might be tied with PSN pernamently).

Code system would be useless to use on console where you got disc that need to work offline without connection.

Hopefully TF2 on PS3 will be affected by this.

plus L4D2 future release too :P

definately all valve games.

im sure valve would let other developers make similar features using the steam platform but i dont think any of them will be bothered. maybe the ones who still support mods, may add it so ps3 users can play mods created on the PC versions but i highly doubt it because it would be easier to just port pc controls and tell people to connect usb keyboards/mice to their ps3.

i think their just making a big fuss of it because they want to prove a point to microsoft about opening up XBL.

Assuming Portal 2 and Steamworks prove popular enough then I expect Valve to get more of their titles on PS3 using it and certainly I'm expecting all future Valve titles to be on PS3 and using Steamworks.

This could prove to be a very interesting scenario depending on how it plays out IMHO.

I hope so