Did Valve Make Good On Their Promise With The PS3?

Valve’s Gabe Newell probably wasn’t the pin-up of most PS3 fanboys until last Summer, his spitting, derogatory comments attracting more vitriol than one of TSA’s opinion pieces.  “A waste of everybody’s time,” he said once.  We’ve never said that…

But, regardless, at E3 last year he righted all the wrongs by saying that not only would Portal 2 [review] appear on the PS3, but it would be the “best version”, complete with Steam integration.  And, you know what, it looks like he might have been right; A2 posters are available now.

But let’s backtrack to the way Valve treated the PS3 up until now: basically, the support was bordering on risible – inferior ports like The Orange Box on the PS3 weren’t even handled by Valve, EA had to pick up the duties because the developers simply weren’t interested.

Sorry.  I mean they “didn’t have the resources” – whatever.

But he was sorry.  “If you look at the customers that I feel we’ve done the worst job at taking care of is the people who bought our product on the PS3 – Orange Box on PS3,” he said back in 2009. “Those are the people who I have trouble saying anything to other than ‘Yeah, I’m sorry. You have legitimate beef with us.”

The PS3 missed out on Left 4 Dead, too, although that’s a different story entirely.  But here we are, in April 2011, and Portal 2’s just about to be released for the PlayStation 3.  And, from what we’re seeing and hearing, a minor miracle has happened, at least for those that form Sony’s longstanding hardcore fanbase: Portal 2 really is “best on PS3”.

PC owners aren’t happy.  The user scores on Metacritic might be up at just over 7 at the moment, but they were down at just over 5 yesterday.  Metacritic’s evolved into something much bigger than most intended over the years, but it’s a shame it still harbours the moaning of fanboys with respect to its user score.

Why the whinging?  Because some PC owners feel their version is actually a port of the PS3 version, complete with “do not switch off your console” messages when saving, and the rather in-your-face paid for DLC available on launch day.  It’s not a ‘port’ at all, of course, but you can’t account for everybody.  Fancy that.

But the Xbox 360 version, which everyone assumed would be the slicker version after Valve’s past experience with the platform?  Not so.  Read, if you will, Lens Of Truth’s screenshot comparison.  I’m not aware of any particular slant taken by the site, I don’t personally frequent it, but those screenshots are certainly telling.

The lighting looks blander, the resolution considerably lower.  At least to me.  Or, rather, not just me – AotF offers up similar criticism.  “The question is: did Sony pay for Steam exclusivity, or did MS refuse it?” asks the site. “Either way, Valve rewarded Sony users with a ‘Steam-lite’ that includes access to custom user made levels, online play with PC/MAC users, and file saves on the steam system.”

The Steam integration isn’t on the 360, presumably due to the closed nature of the console.

An interesting situation, then.  From Valve casting the PS3 aside, to totally embracing it with a passion, Portal 2 shows just what a developer can do when they have the resources.  Naturally, the game’s brilliant whichever platform you decide to go for, but at least PS3 owners can rest easy knowing their version isn’t, for once, sub-par.