Valve has already made major leaps in cross-console connectivity by bringing Steam Cloud to the PS3 with Portal 2, but the developer is seeking to further expand the definition of “multi-platform” with some of the game’s post-release content. While traditionally the PC has been the home for user-created content in the form of patches and modifications, Valve has announced that – with the advantages that Steam Cloud brings – a lot of these fan mods will show up on other platforms.
“The mod tools have to stay on the PC side just because there’s a bunch of dependencies that require the Windows platform,” Valve’s Chet Faliszek explained to NowGamer. “But the content that comes out is agnostic, and so we will be seeing that on all the platforms. Depending on the platform you’re on, I should say, will depend on how we’re delivering it.”
No word yet on how Xbox 360 players will get said content, but we here at Elder-Geek look forward to finding out.
This is awesome and I like it.
I am not sure if this will happen with the 360 considering how closed the system is, and how controlling Microsoft is with updates. If there is downloadable expansion to the game over a certain size, then Microsoft forces the developers to charge a price for that DLC. This is the exact reason why the DLC for L4D and L4D2 cost money on the 360 and not on the PC (if L4D was on the PS3, I am absolutely positive that it would be free seeing that PS3 has free content for some games). Also, this is another reason why the 360 version of TF2 doesn’t get all the updates seeing as how there are quite a few major updates to the game that changed how the game was played and added new maps (new weapons added new strategies).
I just can’t wait to see what people will make with the SDK for Portal 2. The PC modding community is fantastic and I love it.
Maaaaaaaannnnn, Valve is blowing the doors down for Crossplatform gaming. So I’m guessing they don’t care for the PS3 hardware, but love the fact that they can have their own servers on PSN.
Microsoft is going to have to change the way they do XBL or else more of this will start happening.
Will we be looking back at this as a huge change in gaming 5 years down the line? Will this lead to the possiblity of PSN/XBL crossplatform gaming (thus making 360vsPS3 matchmaking ^_^)?
Hopefully it does. Microsoft did a study with average PC gamers vs elite 360 gamers in some online games, and they found that the PC gamers were wiping the floor with the 360 gamers. This is why there is no real cross platform titles (with the exception of FFXI being on 360, PC, and PS2).
I await the days when all multiplatform titles will allow cross platform play, cause fighting games, racers, and shooters will be more fun when you can have access to millions of more potential opponents and allies. Basically 3rd parties just need to do what Valve is doing and create a network where you can be connected with people from different systems. Gonna be interesting to see if they will implement steam chat on the PS3 version, cause that would be cool to be playing Portal 2 on PS3 and then see someone on your friends list launch a game of The Witcher, or other PC exclusives.
Yeah, Steam already said that Steam Chat was going to be fully functional on the PS3 for exactly that reason.
Here’s a crazy idea… what if PSN and XBL were completely gone and replaced with Steam.
That would be pretty insane. I don’t think Sony of Microsoft would just let one third party company control the content that goes onto their boxes. See, they would lose out on quite a bit of money by letting Valve run the show.
Some day way in the future, there might just be one service you log in through, but we are not at that stage yet (although Facebook is quite prevalent on the internet right now).