14 DAY TRIAL // Gabe Newell restated Valve's criticism of the PlayStation 3 in a recent interview with 5BY5. Valve's managing director compared the PS3 with the deceased Gamecube, saying that Sony's console was not an unrestricted medium like the Mac. He continued to comment that the investments necessary for development on the PS3 would not be justified.
“Platform investments, like the Mac, are difficult because you have to be aware of what direction that platform is moving. We need to target platforms that do a better job of looking like where we want to be in a few years,” the exec went on to say in the interview. This was not the first time Valve expressed its disappointment about Sony's platform. In 2007, the same Gabe Newell said that the PS3 was “a total disaster” and that Sony lost touch with the desires of its costumers and developers.
It may be worth remembering that the PS3 hosted the worst version of The Orange Box, Valve's incredibly successful package that contained Portal, Team Fortress 2 and Half Life 2: Episode 2. The port had not even been developed by Valve, Electronic Arts being the company that was hired by Newell to transfer the product on Sony's console. After this partial failure, Valve stopped bringing its creations on the PS3 altogether.
Valve is now working on Portal 2, the sequel to 2007's critically acclaimed Portal, a first-person action/ puzzle game. This new installment in the series will expand on the novelty of the portal gun, allowing players to use it in even more ways. The fact that main villain GLaDOS, an advanced artificial intelligence, survived Portal's ending is good news for the many fans that enjoyed her monologue the first time around. Another new addition announced is a two-player co-op mode that will be provided with even harder puzzles because of the combination of the two portal guns. The tentative release date of this very interesting title is sometime around Christmas 2010 only on the PC and Xbox 360.