Valve Corporation has described Sony’s PlayStation 3 as the ‘most open console’ available on the market in wake of its plans to release Portal 2 on the platform, in addition to features of its Steam service.
The company’s comments come following yesterday’s shock announcement during Sony’s E3 press conference, where Valve boss Gabe Newell took to the stage to unveil the PS3 version of the puzzle sequel.
Chatting with CVG, Valve’s Erik Johnson commented, "We’re a huge fan of open platforms in general," adding, "That’s something that we feel like is the right thing for customers. The PS3 looks like the most open of the consoles right now.
"Fundementally, we want all of our customers to be able to interact with each other – especially with a game like Portal 2, where people want to tell each other about Portal and have fun together.”
“The work we’re going to do on Steam [on PS3], feature-by-feature, we don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like today. But we want to create that same kind of thing on PS3 [as we have on PC] – where people can talk to each other, know what they’ve played."
When quizzed on how long ago it was that the firm decided to have a crack at working with PS3, Johnson replied: "In terms of timing, it was a while ago. The thing for us that made it make the most sense was talking to [Sony] about Steam.”
"We shipped Team Fortress 2 on PC and the Xbox. We shipped over 120 updates on the PC and we’ve shipped less than five on the Xbox. That’s something that we feel like we’ve done a pretty poor job on and we don’t know how to fix it.”
"There’s problems with shipping that many updates on the 360. For us, we kind of need to solve a problem with PS3 customers and hopefully Portal 2 does it.
"We want to make sure we’re doing it right and they’re gettin the kind of value welike to provide to our customers. We’re not interested in giving them a less than stellar experience."
Furthermore, Johnson hinted that past Valve titles may also jump ship to Sony’s black box in the future: "Sure, it’s possible," he said. "We’re focused on Portal 2 right now though."
Portal 2 is due out in 2011.