Valve Praises PSN, Calls XBL “Train Wreck”

675 Views 1 Reply 2 Participants Last post by Moonfly, Sep 10, 2010

Ares

Discussion Starter · Sep 10, 2010

Valve Sings Very Different Song, Praises PSN, Calls XBL “Train Wreck”
09/10/2010 Written by Mike Hartnett

Gabe Newell and the team over at Valve seem to have had an incredibly affectionate relationship with the Xbox360 and XboxLive over the past few years, tearing into the PS3 every chance they got. However, it looks like Gabe and his pals are singing a very different song now.

Apparently, the grass on XboxLive’s side of the fence isn’t as green as their logo, as Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson from Valve tore into the online service this week in an in-depth interview conducted by PCGamer. According to Gabe, providing updates for gamers on XboxLive is a constant hassle for developers, while the PSN is comparably much easier, giving developers the ability to release as much content and as many updates as they need, free of charge.

We thought that there would be something that would emerge, because we figured it was a sort of untenable… Oh yeah, we understand that these are the rules now, but it’s such a train wreck that something will have to change.
That’s why we’re really happy with the current situation with the PS3… We’re solving it now in a way that is going to work for our customers, rather than assuming something is going to emerge later that will allow us to fix this.

Erik Johnson also sounded off in the interview:

Favourite conversation of ours! PS3, so far. The way we’ve dealt with those customers so far, and the product that they have, and the lack of updates on the 360 for TF2 is also a total failure. Those are the ones that sting the worst because… it got all the way through to customers. It’s like a bug. If you fix a bug before it ever ships, it’s pretty cheap. If you ship it and then fix it, it’s really expensive. Those ones are really bad.

The tide is ever changing in the PS3 vs. 360 battle, even though according to Sony, it’s not about beating Microsoft, but about how much quality content they can deliver. If execs at a company like Valve, once the PS3’s harshest critics, feel this way, there’s no doubt that these feelings are probably resonating all around the development community. And people thought the Sega vs. Nintendo era was intense!?

Source: PSLS

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Moonfly

· #2 · Sep 10, 2010

The war of words will never end eh. Obviously he is speaking from a developers point of view. I can completely believe what Gabe is saying, partly because valve are IMO one of the most reputable devs out there, who lead the way in offering value for money. I can imagine the MS way of doing things being a nightmare, they mess with software so much, possibly unnecessarily so, and are well known to make things difficult on purpose if they deem it to suit their goals.

On the flip side, the XBl system of updates etc is so much better on XBL than PSN IME. If only PSN could find a way for game patches and updates to download and install with 5 seconds like on XBL, I would be much happier. In the mean time, its nice to hear that the Sony console is more developer friendly in an area for a change.

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