Valve Confirms No Left 4 Dead for PS3

[DigiQ8]

Valve’s Doug Lombardi has confirmed on videogaming247 that highly anticipated zombie shooter Left 4 Dead is not coming to Sony's PS3. “We were really crappy at bringing games to consoles,” said Lombardi.

EA wanted to do Orange Box on PS3 and they handled it, Left 4 Dead isn’t coming out on PS3 because we’ve not had that call. If the phone rang we would have the conversation, certainly, but it hasn’t happened.

Is Valve giving up on porting / developing games on consoles? nope, as Lombardi revealed that “If Valve were to develop in-house for another format, it would be the Wii." because its growing and there is already a huge user-base for Nintendo's highly successful console.

 

[Absinthe]

Did the Orange Box really do that badly on consoles?

 

[Druckles]

The graphics really wouldn't make Half-Life 2 or Left 4 Dead worth porting it to the Wii I'd have thought.

And yeah, I've seen a lot of people returning here complaining they bought OB for 360 because of all the mods they miss out on. That and the fact we have Steam.

 

[L3TUC3]

The OB was outsourced by EA because valve didn't want to touch consoles. The company did a pretty poor job releasing the game with all sorts of bugs, especially in the multiplayer parts and on the PS3 version.

Valve then jumped back in to fix the game and their reputation because they caught all the flak for it while it wasn't their plan in the first place. I doubt EA will make the same mistake again.

 

[wlodi]

What are the chances of Portal coming to Wii?

Honestly, I found it a bit weird that Valve is kind of lazy about consoles. It seems like PS3 and X360 owners were really lucky that they got Orange Box for consoles. I was wondering if they are going to do some other "Box" with eg. Valve's best online shooters for consoles, but I guess it's not happening.

 

[Druckles]

I doubt Valve will make the same mistake again.

Fixed.

 

[Rapstah]

Isn't the Wii even harder to port to? I can see how they managed a 360 port, that's really a PC running DirectX (it's the console most similar to a high-end PC). The PS3 is a little bit harder, as it runs OpenGL, but it still has a bloody 7000-series GeForce card, anything runs well on that.

 

[Asuka]

The OB was outsourced by EA because valve didn't want to touch consoles. The company did a pretty poor job releasing the game with all sorts of bugs, especially in the multiplayer parts and on the PS3 version.

Valve then jumped back in to fix the game and their reputation because they caught all the flak for it while it wasn't their plan in the first place. I doubt EA will make the same mistake again.

.....not true.

Valve fully developed the 360 version. EA came to them to make the PS3 version. Which my friend has and it really doesnt have NEARLY as many problems as people say. The slowdowns (bad fps) maybe once or twice. The loading is really the only problem. But you get a quicksave on the PS3 so that makes up for it.

Did the Orange Box really do that badly on consoles?

Where did you get that? It sold very well. 1.5 mil on 360 and Hundreds of thousands on ps3. Thats VERY GOOD. Now they broke into the console market, it will be easier from this point on.

Anyway this sucks for my friend. Hardcore PS3 fanboy.

 

[Crispy]

Isn't the Wii even harder to port to? I can see how they managed a 360 port, that's really a PC running DirectX (it's the console most similar to a high-end PC). The PS3 is a little bit harder, as it runs OpenGL, but it still has a bloody 7000-series GeForce card, anything runs well on that.

I looked around a bit and found a fair bit of info and comments about PS3 vs 360:

First, an interesting thread from online tech broadcasting network, Revision3, which covers both sides of the argument reasonably evenly.

One of ths big things discussed in that thread is the unpronouncably-named PhyreEngine, which is basically a dev kit geared towards cross-platform porting with PS3, with the emphasis on getting more developers to lead their development on PS3 and then port to XBox. This idea gets recent support from EA and LucasArts, who both indicate more positive results (or perhaps it's safer to say 'less negative results') are to be had with leading development on PS3.

CEO admits to engineering issues on Sony console

CEO of Electronic Arts John Riccitiello has admitted that the company is still experiencing issues with PlayStation 3 software development, although not with titles where the PS3 is the lead format.

Speaking in an investors conference call following the announcement of the company's financial earnings, Riccitiello said the group still had engineering work to do on the format.

"Games where we led development on the PS3 platform, like Burnout, which is doing very well on the market today, we had no issue at all," he said.

"But in circumstances where we either led on the Xbox 360 or ran parallel production, for the most part, we're still experiencing some delay on the PS3. It's a little bit more of a challenging development environment for us."

Admitting that the problem has improved over the past months, he added, "there still remains some catching up to do on the engineering side for the PS3."

Furthermore, Gamespot report that LucasArts have recently announced a move to lead with the PS3 and then recompile for other platforms. This seems fairly significant considering the amount of Light and Magic usually present in their gamnes.


Next is a very good article on developing for PS3, from someone who has done just that (a programmer at Volatile). It's from the Guardian (British newspaper) tech section, so there's not too much technobabble to grapple with, making the main points quite easy to grasp. The main thing seems to be that the PS3 architecture spreads a lot of the processes across its 8 (7?) cell processors, and although each only has access to 256mb memory for graphics, provided enough jiggery-pokery is done to get every last drop out of each one, graphics for the PS3 are not a problem. Additionally, all in all the PS3 has far more untapped processing power, which should see it in very good stead in terms of running more physics calculations and more procedural processes simultaneously.

So it seems that the general jist is that PS3 is not as immediately accessible to developers because it takes a new approach to processor architecture, but if the effort is put in to master it, the benefits are. The argument seems moot, though, when you take into account the amount of time it will take developers to get accustomed to developing for the PS3, and the barrier-to-entry the extortionate price tag has meant for consumers. The fact remains that less people own PS3s than 360s, and it will be some time before developers get their heads around taming the beast that is the Playstation. I think from all of this the best I can garner is that the PS3 is ahead of its time, making it perhaps more of a next-next gen machine.

The burning question on my lips is: Can Sony can weather the storm until the PS3 reaches its true potential?

 

[Rapstah]

Thank you, those are all fantastic reads.

 

[Cormeh]

Everyone seems to be confident in the fact that because Doug mentioned the Wii, all it means is a port of existing games.

I'm thinking differently, because as far as I recall, Gabe previously mentioned enthusiasm for developing stand alone titles for Nintendos machine.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

I think development of Wii games would be a silly move on Valve's part. The audience that has been buying up the Wii is entirely different from the niche that uses Steam and plays other Valve games.

Not to mention the actual game pickup rates are absolutely horrendous on the Wii - nobody buys games that aren't made by Nintendo. I'm fairly certain that percentage wise, Wii has the worst third party game pickup rates as it is. I think with proper advertising and resources they would be best off developing for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 crowds.

 

[ailevation]

Everyone seems to be confident in the fact that because Doug mentioned the Wii, all it means is a port of existing games.

I'm thinking differently, because as far as I recall, Gabe previously mentioned enthusiasm for developing stand alone titles for Nintendos machine.

That sounds great.

I would rather Valve create standalone titles for the Wii than porting over the previous Half Life games, but Portal could be something great for the Wii. I'm sure Valve could take the Wii's design to a whole different level; smashing through new gameplay barriers. This might also spark the fuse for better game development for the Wii as well, atleast for the more hardcore crowd. Because for me Zelda is great and Mario being cool and all, titles like these which are dominant on the Wii let alone any Nintendo console aren't doing it for me as much as the other sources of gaming do with more mature titles and i'm not referring to titles necessarily being slapped with M ratings but, things that aren't marketed more toward 6 to 10 year-olds.

 

[freakyflor]

They got a point but I rather get a crappy port (like last time ) then no game at all.

 

[Insano]

Valve go Wii, instant win

 

[63]

They got a point but I rather get a crappy port (like last time ) then no game at all.

I second that! Give me BMS!

 

[TheHamster22]

I think development of Wii games would be a silly move on Valve's part. The audience that has been buying up the Wii is entirely different from the niche that uses Steam and plays other Valve games.

Not to mention the actual game pickup rates are absolutely horrendous on the Wii - nobody buys games that aren't made by Nintendo. I'm fairly certain that percentage wise, Wii has the worst third party game pickup rates as it is. I think with proper advertising and resources they would be best off developing for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 crowds.

I'm pretty sure the problem with third party pick up rates for the Wii is purely because they are all awful games as far as I can tell D: Nintendo seems to be the only people giving any love at all to the machine, which of course makes sense.

 

[omgwut]

I thought they did a fine job with the Xbox360 version, and I wouldn't mind them developing for it again in the future. It was never their intention to release it on the PS3 until EA offered to handle the port, so they went along with it.

The Wii sounds exciting.

 

[mortiz-Redux]

I'm willing to bet a lot of STEAM users also own a Wii, so they could exploit perhaps an already existing user-base. VALVe should do survery asking users what other consoles/platforms they own.

 

[kami7889]

I think development of Wii games would be a silly move on Valve's part. The audience that has been buying up the Wii is entirely different from the niche that uses Steam and plays other Valve games.

Not to mention the actual game pickup rates are absolutely horrendous on the Wii - nobody buys games that aren't made by Nintendo. I'm fairly certain that percentage wise, Wii has the worst third party game pickup rates as it is. I think with proper advertising and resources they would be best off developing for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 crowds.

So you're saying that a good game developer shouldn't make games for the Wii since the Wii has no good game developers already on it? That's absurd. Nintendo has been the biggest developer for their own consoles for a while now, since late 64 and most all of GC and now all of Wii (about 90% of my games are nintendo :[...) But there's no reason Valve shouldn't make a game for the Wii. Saying that most Wii owners wouldn't want a valve game on the Wii is just stupid.

 

[Cormeh]

I'd love to see a Steam Channel on the Wii.

 

[kamikazeCow]

I'd love to see a Steam Channel on the Wii.

QFT, not to mention cross platform games too. The wii-mote is pretty level with a mouse and keyboard, balancing wouldn't be too big of an issue