valve...AND sony....together.

Think back to the past 3 years of valve and gabe praising playstation.

well the prior point is probably the more relevant one considering their finances.  With their cutbacks, consolidations, and deemphasis on higher risk investments, I don't see a joint venture  being something they would ever do in the near future. Sony was in a much better money situation when they did the joint venture with Ericson back in 2001 and while it turned out well they were a much better fit for each other then Valve and Sony.  They both exceedingly benfited from it.  I don't see Valve really benefitting as much from this.

I'm not really seeing how you're evidencing this.
Valve wants hardware. Valve doesn't make hardware.

Sony opened up their network, and want to create an online platform.
Gaikai will make PC gaming available on ps3, or ps4, and open the last hurdle into open platform development.

Steam meanwhile is moving into, yep, Linux platforms. PS3's OS is BASED on Linux.

Not to mention, that Playstation is already moving into 500GB drive area. A disc based console does not need 500GB....that's 10 full BluRay games. PS4 will likely see further movement into 1TB drives.
Additionally, Sony is also getting rid of the cell, which was very difficult to program for. They have already confirmed that they are moving back to regular CPUs.

Valve stands to benefit by shrugging off the closed Windows based platforms to a much more open environment where they can make a bigger slice of the profits. They would not have to make additional hardware, and could get an instant demographic of many many millions of ps3 owners.
Sony stands to benefit by allowing any and every developer out there, a way to publish onto ps3. It also serves to grow the Gaikai business, and also to push forward the age of digital distribution. Another benefit, would be to allow the cloud to power the gaming technologies to unheard of levels. With Gaikai and steam, a playstation 4 could be released with only a medium upgrade to hardware (trading out the expensive cell processor as well) to keep costs low, while simultaneously allowing certain demographics to play games that would blow away anything 720 could throw at it.

well the prior point is probably the more relevant one considering their finances.  With their cutbacks, consolidations, and deemphasis on higher risk investments, I don't see a joint venture  being something they would ever do in the near future. Sony was in a much better money situation when they did the joint venture with Ericson back in 2001 and while it turned out well they were a much better fit for each other then Valve and Sony.  They both exceedingly benfited from it.  I don't see Valve really benefitting as much from this.

I'm not really seeing how you're evidencing this.
Valve wants hardware. Valve doesn't make hardware.

Sony opened up their network, and want to create an online platform.
Gaikai will make PC gaming available on ps3, or ps4, and open the last hurdle into open platform development.

Steam meanwhile is moving into, yep, Linux platforms. PS3's OS is BASED on Linux.

Not to mention, that Playstation is already moving into 500GB drive area. A disc based console does not need 500GB....that's 10 full BluRay games. PS4 will likely see further movement into 1TB drives.
Additionally, Sony is also getting rid of the cell, which was very difficult to program for. They have already confirmed that they are moving back to regular CPUs.

Valve stands to benefit by shrugging off the closed Windows based platforms to a much more open environment where they can make a bigger slice of the profits. They would not have to make additional hardware, and could get an instant demographic of many many millions of ps3 owners.
Sony stands to benefit by allowing any and every developer out there, a way to publish onto ps3. It also serves to grow the Gaikai business, and also to push forward the age of digital distribution. Another benefit, would be to allow the cloud to power the gaming technologies to unheard of levels. With Gaikai and steam, a playstation 4 could be released with only a medium upgrade to hardware (trading out the expensive cell processor as well) to keep costs low, while simultaneously allowing certain demographics to play games that would blow away anything 720 could throw at it.

Valve specifically said they don't like closed platforms, and I not only in the previous post said that valve and gabe praised ps3 for being so open, but also showed you that Sony is going "even further" into being open with some recent links from a VP.

You're entitled to your opinion of course, but what you just wrote is in contrast to the links I just posted for you, fyi.

Wel I couldn't find any details in those articles, I'm sure PS4 will still have licensing and royaltie fees.  Yes valve is mentioning they are not a fan of Closed networks, but it also seems they arent satisfied with other companies  taking a chunk of their profit.  

"Right now, consoles are what are considered as closed platforms. There are all sorts of licencing hoops developers have to jump through to get their games published – and even once they are, there are even more hoops to jump through just to patch those games. Sony wants to change that."

"

“We used to have certain requirements for publishing. Now we have none for developers to publish other content. You have to go through the process of submitting for concept approval, but all of these things are things that have naturally evolved over the console life cycle. We’re evolving more than ever now because the industry is evolving.

One of those evolutions is that Sony now allows developers to issue data-only patches to their games for free – something that would have made Fez developer Polytron’s life a lot easier had they published their indie hit Fez on the PSN instead of Xbox Live. The game is, and will likely forever remain slightly broken on Xbox Live – because the certification to issue a patch could cost as must as US$40 000 – a ludicrous sum for something that, for example, Steam doesn’t charge a cent for."