Speaking to videogaming247 at GDC today, Valve’s Doug Lombardi has confirmed that highly anticipated zombie shooter Left 4 Dead is definitely not planned for release on PlayStation 3, and said that if the company were to tool up for a format outside PC and Xbox 360 it would be Wii.
“We were really crappy at bringing games to consoles,” he said. He cited the time it took to move the original Half-Life games to console formats as an example of how the company had come “really late” to console development. He said that while the focus had always been on PC, the company had now moved up a gear to produce games simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PC, but that it had limited interest in developing for Playstation 3.
“EA wanted to do Orange Box on PS3 and they handled it,” said Lombardi. “Left 4 Dead isn’t coming out on PS3 because we’ve not had that call. If the phone rang we would have the conversation, certainly, but it hasn’t happened.”
Lombardi suggested that Left 4 Dead’s Counter-Strike origins might have made it less appealing to PlayStation audiences and the publishers trying to serve them.
“They saw Portal and Team Fortress 2 and said ‘Oh wow’, so I guess that sold it,” he said. “We’ll have to wait and see on Left 4 Dead.”
Lombardi also revealed that, “If Valve were to develop in-house for another format, it would be the Wii. It’s growing, there’s already a huge user-base, and it’s fun. Source is really scaleable. We can do that.”
Left 4 Dead is being developed by Valve-owned Turtle Rock Studios and has no specific release date as yet.
My thoughts: smart, smart Valve. They don't have anything to gain with the PS3 and Source should be easy to port over to the Wii.
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