Half Life developer Valve and the PS3 have had their ups and downs. And by “their ups and downs,” I mean “only downs.” The PS3’s version of The Orange Box fell some way below Valve’s usual impeccable standards, and Valve head Gabe Newell had this to say about the console in 2007:

“The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels.”

But hey, that was 2007. Surely Valve and Sony’s console have talked through their differences by now, suggests GameTrailers TV host Geoff Keighley in this interview (at 19:22). Water under the bridge and all that? Well, Gabe?

GEOFF KEIGHLEY: “Are you guys working on PS3 now, trying to understand it, trying to get better at it?”
GABE NEWELL: “Uh, no. Not in any real way.”

Buuuurn.

On the plus side, Newell did apologise to PS3 owners, and admitted that they could have “legitimate beefs” with the developer. Sadly, it looks like PS3 owners may be waiting a while for their own version of Left 4 Dead, or … anything from Valve, really. Talking of which, the interview I linked above contains snippets of footage from both Left 4 Dead 2 and new downloadable content for the original title.

[Via GameTrailers]

Related posts:

1. Valve researching sign language for next Half Life 2 chapter
2. Less gory Left 4 Dead 2 cleared for release in Australia
3. Gamers pissed at Valve, boycotting Left 4 Dead 2

If you’ve just thought WTF in the same way as I did when I read the report, there’s some semblance of sanity behind the move and Google isn’t interested (well we think) in developing computer games; Valve also offers Steam, a content distribution service described by the Inquirer as “amazing.”

Wikipedia describes the service as follows:

Steam is a successful digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute and manage (sometimes exclusively) a wide range of games entirely over the internet, stretching from one-man independent efforts to some of the world’s most popular. Steam is set apart from its peers in terms of functionality primarily by its residency in the system tray, and the desktop tasks that the client software performs, which will be detailed in the article, to make use of that position.

As of 2008-09-11, over 440 games are available on Steam, and as of 2008-02-07, there are over 15 million active user accounts.

Google Games, or Google content distribution? makes sense when you consider Google’s current strategy of trying to be everything to everyone everywhere. Still, can you imagine how ugly Half-Life 3 will look once the Google engineers get involved

Related posts:

1. Valve researching sign language for next Half Life 2 chapter
2. [Breaking] Sony MMO Library of Games now on Valve’s Steam Store
3. Half-Life deal of a lifetime