Found an article that pretty much solidifies the fact that EA has a BIG HAND in the development/porting of Half Life 2 to the PS3:

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200708/N07.0827.1503.17430.htm?Page=3

GI: Have your thoughts changed at all about the PlayStation 3? Do you still think Sony should call for a do-over?

Newell: Nothing’s changed. My impressions of it are pretty much the same.

GI: Do you think from now on you’ll keep outsourcing PS3 projects [ed: Orange Box for PS3 is being done by EA], or will you start bringing those projects in house?

Newell: I think we’ll bring them in house more for licensees issues than our own. Just for our own priorities, that puts the Wii at a much higher priority at understanding that. I think the Wii represents more of a challenge because of its input. You can think of the Xbox 360 as pretty much a PC and a PlayStation as kind of a PC. The Wii gives you a bunch of problems that don’t fit into that model. You can’t think of it as graphics, CPU, texture bandwith scaling, you have to think of it as more fundamentally, and I think it’s more valuable. I think it’s more interesting than just graphics chip – CPU combination. It’s the machine I have at home. The fact that we don’t have anything in development on it even though it represents big opportunities as a whole, it’s an obvious hole in our strategy.

They outsourced EA to port it to the PS3. Bad move ........... 

That doesn't make any sense, in the video I posted they said point blank they are compiling from one source code for all platforms. It doesn't really say which part of the project was outsourced either but that means it could be anything.

Either way I am just glad my PC version won't be tainted.

Just like I said earlier, Valve doesn't like the PS3. Which is EXACTLY why this thread was "derailed" like this. It isn't even Valve working on the PS3 version... I expect that they didn't really care who they handed it to either... I wouldn't look to HL2 for a PS3 triple A title. Expect another Spiderman 3.... I am also expecting people to be pissed off as hell about this when it comes out. 360 version will be awesome though.

This was a terrible terrible example of a game that would take advantage of the PS3's power... Go and talk about I don't know, Killzone 2? Heavenly Sword? MGS4? FF13?

Regardless of whether it's "difficult" to develop for, VALVE KNEW THAT WHEN THEY DECIDED TO PUT THE GAME ON PS3. And even then, he decided to half ass it. That was the whole point of my post. Nobody forced his ass to put HL2 on the PS3. It was his choice, and as such, he should TRY HARDER with BETTER HARDWARE. I didn't hear Insomniac whining about how hard it was, I don't hear Hideo Kojima whining about it, I don't hear Ninja Theory whining about it, I see them putting awesome games on a powerful system, and I hear most of them saying things along the lines of "there's no way we could put this on 360". And here we have valve whining about how hard it is to port a last gen game to it.

 Link?

Not RSX, anyway. RSX is based on G71, which has poor dynamic branching and isn't suited to running physics, even in a theoretical manner. 

There's no one interview anywhere on the planet where a console dev has mentioned running physics on the GPU on Xbox360 or PS3. That's just not possible. If there is such an interview, point me to it.

The only place physics on GPU is even being discussed is on PC, and then they mean to add a third graphics card just to run the physics. And on top of that physics run by a GPU would be non-interactive. Aka, you could make smoke roll to look prettier, but you couldn't kick boulders or interact with GPU physics. 

And even on PC, no game currently runs phyics on the gfx card. It was just something being kicked around but it didn't take off because it's not very desirable. You cant send the physics data to the GPU then get it back in time to include it in gameplay due to latency. So all it can do is make things look prettier like I said. But PS3/360 cant even do that.

 Cell is much better suited to physics anyway. This guy is a real tard if he thinks they left Cell spu's sitting idle as he claims but ran physics on RSX instead. That would be bass ackwards, not too mention impossible.

The guy is not a dev, period. Again, he claimed to work for Vivendi. Vivendi is Valve's publisher. The guy is so dumb he doesn't even understand that Vivendi!=Valve. That would be like saying Microsoft=Bungie. 

... your knowledge is astoundingly bad at the end. EA is Valves publisher. Vivendi used to be their publisher until Valve released Steam and Vivendi and Valve sued eachother for breach of contract.

Gabe Newell churned out two of the greatest games ever made and hasn't once released a bad one. Gabe was the director for those games. They revolutionized every aspect of FPS, and even though it was delayed for a full year, it still came out with the most ground breaking graphics seen for about a whole year after.

You can say that Gabe didn't give PS3 a chance, but do not doubt Gabe's talent as a dev because that is bullshit. Gabe has earned his right to speak, just like other great devs do. Weather or not he is right all the time is yet to be seen, but the man has the all time most played Multiplayer FPS and one of the if not the greatest FPS series released to date.

So MY knowledge is astoundingly bad? Because this dev says he works for a company that no longer is even affiliated with Valve?

So what does that make this alleged PS3 dev??!! His knowledge is astoundingly even worse??!! Why didn't you mention that???

 BTW, I have a feeling you just didn't like my post. Why didn't you argue with the main part of my post? The many other sections that prove the dev is a fraud? Cus lets just say I am correct. I hate it when people dont like a post so they pick one tiny fact that is wrong to devalue the whole post when the main part of the post is 100% correct but they ignore that.

But I'm sure you're right I was thinking of Half Life 2 PC that was published by Vivendi. Which makes this "dev" in the interview even more ridiculous.

Nobody is impressed that the ps3 didnt use its spu's to match a 360 game? O_O

Dude, the interview is unequivocally fake. How many times have I proved that?

I guess people hear what they want to hear.

Although, frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of PS3 games dont use the SPU's.

The easiest way to make a PS3 game is to just put your stuff on the PPE and ignore the SPU's. I'm sure many early PS3 games did just that. Just as I'm sure a lot of early 360 games just used one core. Well, they probably used the other cores for decompressin and audio and stuff, since that's easy to do.

And a lot of what the SPU's ARE used for in advanced games like Killzone 2 as far as I can tell, is going to be graphical things, and not CPU things. 

Muli-threading programming is VERY difficult. On Xbox 360, and even morseo on PS3.