Portal 2 Coming to PS3!
- June 16th, 2010
- Posted in E3 2010 . News
- By nineinchnailed
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With all the news and hype over PlayStation Move, Gran Turismo 5, PlayStation Plus and all the other excitement from E3, the biggest surprise announcement of them all has almost been overshadowed by everything else. Portal 2, from Valve Corporation, is coming to PlayStation 3.
While this may not seem that significant at first, there are two very interesting points to be made:
1) Valve’s Managing Director, Gabe Newell, once said the following about PlayStation 3:
“The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels, I think it’s really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted”
“I’d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a do over. Just say, ‘This was a horrible disaster and we’re sorry and we’re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it’”
“We’re not PS3 developers – we’re doing PC and 360 like with Orange Box.”
2) Valve is probably the last major 3rd party developer not be involved with developing software for PlayStation 3.
The comments Newell made in the first point above were made in 2007 when the PlayStation 3 was in its infancy and was quite frankly as massive disappointment to many gamers and developers, and was a much weaker system than it is now. Sony stumbled badly when the PlayStation 3 was first released and it’s easy to see why developers like Newell were so scathing about the hardware. Three years later however and everything has changed. The PS3 is no longer playing catch-up and, thanks to a series of major firmware updates, is leading the field in many ways, with massively improved online services, a wide range of acclaimed software both exclusive and multi-platform, 3D capabilities and a very powerful central processor (the Cell) which developers are starting to really push to the limits.
Not only was Portal 2 announced for PS3 but the fact that it was announced by none other than Gabe Newell himself shows just how far PS3 has come in the last three years. If Gabe Newell, perhaps the most outspoken critic of PS3 from the developer world, can come around to fully supporting PlayStation 3, then Sony may have truly succeeded in turning around the PS3′s fortunes.
Valve developed the original Portal game but more significantly they also developed Half-Life 2, one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time, as well as the Left 4 Dead series of games. Neither of the Left 4 Dead games were released on PlayStation 3 and the ‘Orange Box’, containing Half-Life 2, its two expansions, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, was ported by EA rather than Valve, which lead to many complaints from gamers and Valve themselves over how this was handled and the number of bugs that resulted from this. Valve are known for releasing very highly polished games and the PS3 port of the Orange Box was a mistake they vowed not to repeat. This all changes now. Valve are officially developing for PS3, which means any future Half-Life 2 expansions, such as the almost mystical Half-Life 2: Episode 3, should in theory be released for PS3. Were Valve to repeat their experiment with releasing a bundle of games like the ‘Orange Box’, a Valve-developed compilation of Half-Life 2 plus Half-Life 2: Episodes 1 – 3 could even be released on PS3 in the future. Who knows? The point is that this is now a possibility.
If you want to see more of Gabe Newell’s Portal 2 announcement, check out the video below: