News Why Valve don't make PS3 games

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/06/10/why-valve-don-t-make-ps3-games/1

Valve have definitively explained why they aren't interested in making PlayStation 3 games and why other studios will always handle their ports.

 

rite in the nads!

 

Ouch. I can understand where he's coming from though. I guess with the success of PC and 360 platforms, they just don't feel the need to learn a whole new platform from scratch.

 

Pfft I don't want a L4D a year anyway! Where the **** is HL2:Episode 3?

 

I interpret this as: "We can't be bothered to learn to code for a non PC-like architecture and we're making enough cash as it is to not need to."

 

Sorry to be a nitpicker but there are several badly written sentences in that report where words are in the wrong order etc.

 

".......... I didn't come into this business in the 90s because of some technical fetish. I came in because I wanted to give people experiences that made them have fun."

What a load of rubbish ! They got into the business to make money. Simple as that.

If the PS3 was the dominant console, they would learn how to code for it, and sell on that platform too, but as its not, then I guess we are out of luck.

 

saying that... they dont make games for the wii either ! but that is surely down to technical limitations as I doubt any Valve game would even fit/work adequately on the wii platform.. plus we all know that 3rd party products on the wii dont sell too well... just ask EA !

 

And while we are at it, one should never start a sentence with the word 'And'

 

But the Xbox 360 architecture is very much different to the PC one so I don't see how this sums it up...

 

It's closer to the PC architecture than the PS3 is, that's for sure.

 

I can't see why it would be impossible to bring it to the wii: half life 2 was released for the xbox, and wii is more powerfull and pretty simple to program for.

They might have to redo the source engine a bit, but I'd say you have a better chance of Valve making a Wii game then a PS3 game ( I'd buy it day one, wii fps controls beat analog sticks by a long shot....)

 

How many Valves are there? The word "don't" implies lots. Haven't been in the UK for some time, but this sort of gramer [that was intentional] seems to be increasingly-common.

 

Can't argue with Gabe Newell now can you?

 

I do believe in that. Its like a renowed paint artist, he started doing what he wanted, and people paid actuall money for him. Why it's so hard to believe people love what they do? Money is consequence, but highly welcome consequence.

Isn't there LOTS of games that doesn't see their ports to pc from PS3 for example? Anyway, the playing experience in PC is much better than what it is in consoles.

 

Actually, it's not about architecture, but more about stupid limitations here and here and here. Source games are not very multithread friendly (not much stuff is put on 2nd core on PC either), so PS3 with it's 6 cores need a big multicore rewrite (which even EA weren't able to do correctly). Then 256MB RAM - that is pretty big limit (and no, PS3 doesn't have 512MB RAM - it have 256MB RAM for application and 256MB for graphics card).

Combine all this and the result would be a need for a completely new engine, which simply is not worth to do, especially when they need developers elsewhere.

 

Pfft. That's a limited perspective. I got into journalism to make money too obviously, but that wasn't my only reason. It wasn't even a reason I acknowledged. Instead, I got into it because I enjoy writing about games. The money was just a bonus - that's what he's clearly driving at.

As for Don't / Doesn't - duly noted and corrected.

 

No "Left for Dead" on the PS3? What a shame! Hell, I don't even like L4D on the PC. It's just shallow dross.

 

Multi-threading is only part of the problem, it is hard to code for multiple threads but generally, it can be done. The other part is architecture. The PPE can run any sort of code no problem but you're not fully using the power of cell since you're not using the SPEs. It's trying to think of code that can make use of the SPEs as well as the PPE and from what I've read the SPE is more optimised for specific types of code, not only that, any code you want to run on the SPE has to go through the PPE which means you have to change your programming paradigm/methodology/techniques just to code for cell. Contrast that with Xbox or a PC processor which runs any sort of code you throw at it and because of this is is quite flexible with any programming paradigm/methodology/technique you use. I also suspect that the techniques some game programmers use would probably need heavy re-thinking just to get them to work on the cell which would tick the "Can I be arsed?" box.

 

And this is why I will always (assuming they don't change their ideology) love Microsoft when it comes to consoles. The fact the 360 is easy to write for is no coincidence. MS wanted it to be like that, and even listened to Epic saying they wanted more RAM (otherwise my beloved 360 would have a horrific 256MB of shared RAM instead of the 512MB it has now).

Sony still seem to be in the mindset that they can do what they want, and what suits them, and everyone will just follow. At least MS is being proactive about it, and encouraging development and making it easier for developers, even if they did royally screw up the terrible reliability of the 360 in order to get them out first. Although, as far as I know, those issues are largely resolved.