"Absolutely. I think [PS3 is] a waste of everybody’s time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There’s nothing there that you’re going to apply to anything else. You’re not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they’ve created. I don’t think they’re going to make money off their box. I don’t think it’s a good solution." -Gabe Newell, head of Valve

Well said fatty, that goes to my signature. 

It's like mrstick said, they actually have the (mad) skill(z) to use the PS3 architecture's to the max, but from the business perspective is pointless. It's obvious that the PC and Xbox 360 versions are gonna sell better... I mean, look at how many people from here already have the PC ver. of the Orange Box.

 I 2nd that! Krik had it right also. As for Chrono look at how long those games have been/were in development. Kojima has been working on MGS4 a very long time. I just hope they don't need MGS4 to sell like Halo 3 to be profitable because that's not gonna happen.

@mrstickball

A spade is a spade no matter how you word it, and you worded it fine.

mrstickball summarized it as succinctly as possible.

Although, I would have used the PS2 as the premiere example. Sure the Gamecube and XBox were easy to program for (compared to that Emotion engine, yikes.) But with the userbase the PS2 was packin', you had no choice in the matter.

They are in no way saying they "can't" do it. Mr Newell is saying that he doesn't see a reason to do it. Basically he doesn't feel that investing time, money, and energy into relearning the PS3 framework is worthwhile because the PS3 is not going to scale upwards like the PC. So in effect he doesn't want to learn a bunch of new stuff just to forget it all in 6-8 years because its worthless then. He would rather his team continue to hone their PC development skills and since the 360 fits that architecture very nicely he sees the point in dealing with that console because its not a huge sidetrack.

The Wii isn't very PC like either, although its much closer to the PC than it is the PS3. And for that reason I don't think valve was going to touch it initially. In light of its expanding market share though they have expressed that they are concerned with how they are going to capatilize on the Wii without compromising their business model.

I think folks need to step back and realize that while some here may think of this as "The Console WAR!!!", most devs look at this as "The Making Money WAR!". These studios are part of a business. They aren't just stooges in a big game of pick the best console. The want to make $$money$$, period.

....And I think PS3 developer times have shown exactly what kind of issue they're running into.

Compare Xbox 360 vs. PS3 vs. Wii games on the actual confirmed release dates for the major games.

Wii games have always been 100% locked for dates, even from a few months off.

Xbox 360 games have *typically* been very accurate, expecially for the big games. In the case of Halo 3, it was pushed up, offsetting Mass Effect being pushed back, but most games have been when they needed.

The vast majority of larger games have been pushed back on PS3 - Lair, Heavenly Sword, Stranglehold, Dirt, GRAW 2, et all. What is that supposed to mean? Not only this, the uber-major titles such as MGS, FFXIII and such are all 2008 or 2009 - why is it that the PS3 hasn't had a single major title to hit in it's first year, yet the Xbox 360 had Gears, in year 1, and the Wii will have SSBB and SMG within 1 year?

And like you re-iterated when I said it: if you aren't having very strong sales for your hardware (like the PS2, which also had difficult/costly archatecture), it's a major hinderance.

I feel that although Sony definately "futureproofed"

the guys at valve have stated to "friends" that they really love the concept fo the wii and that possibly sometime in the future they will "think" about maybe putting games on it. and that was from a source i cannot say cause the guy is a ds game maker, and now works at digipin.

That was a surprisingly candid interview and fascinating to read. Particularly this part:

Edge: When we talked to Robin Walker about Team Fortress 2, he said that the art style was conceived well after the gameplay was nailed down. Do you feel this was a more successful approach than on previous projects?

GN: I think it’s a sign that we’re becoming more mature as game developers. When we were doing Half-Life 1, it was like: here’s a really cool weird-looking monster. I think we’re now much more able to say: here are the design objectives, here’s what we need to accomplish in the game – how do the art direction and individual art choices support this?
I think our decisions are much less haphazard now – people understand internally why we have the visual design for the classes and environments, and it makes it a lot easier for people to do things that are consistent with that and further those goals.

Edge: It’s pretty evident from the migration from schlock sci-fi tropes to more emotional drama that you’ve evolved the design process in other ways. Was there a conscious decision to give your games more narrative depth?

GN: As we were building Half-Life 1 we saw opportunities for more sophisticated storytelling and we felt that the audience was ready for it. At the time of Half-Life 1 the folk theory about action gamers was pretty insulting. You’d hear people at conferences extolling the design philosophy that if a double-barrelled shotgun was good then a triple- or quad-barrelled shotgun is better. I think that’s an example of listening to gamers in the wrong way. When I was playing Doom my sensation was of this really interesting world and this story that I didn’t really understand – but there were enough cues in the environment and I was scared enough that I was imputing a lot more storytelling, having talked to the guys at id, than they actually intended. So we’ve started chasing after that goal – in some of the simple investments and cliché of Half-Life 1 I can communicate something to you fairly parsimoniously by invoking a 1950s B-movie sci-fi trope. Then when we saw what we were able to do in Half-Life 2, not only did we believe in that idea even more, but the response to Half-Life had been so strong especially in regards to that aspect that we decided to push it a lot harder. We have a larger notion of the fiction and the issues which you have. We think we’re telling a deeper story now – time will tell if we are fooling ourselves or not.

It seems like the art style and the team-based gameplay go hand-in-hand so well that it's hard to believe they were not conceptualized at the same time. 

If by futureproofed you mean proofed against a future, then yes.  Even developers putting their big titles on the PS3 like Square Enix are talking smack about the PS3 (some console, some hardware, ...etc).

Seems like it's getting harder and harder to stay in the Sony camp as it gets slammed over and over from different directions.