When the Orange Box was released on the PS3 and Xbox 360, PlayStation gamers felt like they got ‘the short end of the stick’, as Valve's PS3 version of the package was far inferior in various respects - in fact, it is believed Valve eventually cast off the project to some EA studio to finish.

The salt in the wound was Valve's president voicing his preference for Xbox over PlayStation, and not surprisingly Left 4 Dead came to exist as a 360 exclusive. Getting an idea as to why PS3 owners are a little upset with the developer? Well now change is in the air, as Valve is looking into the possibility of doing some work on the mighty PS3.

Whilst Valve have previously criticised the console for it's architecture, now they're just saying that they need new people to code for it. Talking to Joystiq at a Left 4 Dead 2, Doug Lombardi said;

'we have to get people under our roof who are dedicated, talented PS3 guys and then all bets are off. We can take the same sort of strides and get the quality out of the box and offer the same support post-launch on that platform, as well.'

Nice of them to see sense - ignoring a market so large would be a stupid mistake. So could this mean Left 4 Dead 2 PS3? Well, probably not, though we suppose a late port could be possible. Left 4 Dead 3 PS3, however, is much more likely.

Valve, the makers of, oh, let's go with the Half Life series, have said (again) that the Playstation 3 is too complicated for their simple little minds. Loot-Ninja spoke to them at E3 and asked the compulsory question, 'Why won't you develop for the PS3, you lazy buggers?' Valve replied with:

'The PC and the 360 are just more straightforward. We can focus on what we want to do, which is make game experiences, instead of sweating bullets over obscure architectural decisions they make with their platform. [...] 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.'

So they're either too lazy and retardedly superior or they're just not good developers. Do they expect technology to just stay the same forever? They're not going to adapt with tech as it evolves? If that's they're choice they're going to get left behind.

If so many companies can pull so much out of the PS3, Valve, the makers of brilliant games such as Left 4 Dead, Half Life 2, Team Fortress, etc should be able to manage to port their visually unimpressive games across. Not only are they screwing over their fans who don't own  either a gaming PC or an Xbox 360, they're also blocking out a very large market. I know I'd buy Left 4 Dead if they released it on PS3. Read more »