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They don't have six different teams working on six different titles. That doesn't mean they're lazy.
On top of that, whats wrong with living off of one title? You want me to give credit to people who gamble? Why? Give an example of one of these "better" developers. Developers gamble on new IP's looking for the next Final Fantasy, or Zelda. Valve found theirs early and somehow this makes them bad? Please...
*bleep*ing Counter Strike, Half Life, Portal and Team Fortress beats the shit out of pretty much ANY OTHER developer.
Is this a joke? Here's someone saying Valve lives off of one series, which happens to be one of the most critically acclaimed videogame series EVER, even after the release of Portal and Team Fortress 2, and I'M the one getting thumbs down.
The Madden series is a joke. Buy last years game for 5 dollars instead of buying this years game for 60.
EA hatred isn't a Sony-exclusive, you know.
It looks to most people though, like Gabe is just bitchy since their home has been on the PC for-basically-ever and having to learn how to design for a new architecture isn't something that VALVe wants to invest the time or money into it. Nope, instead they handed it off to some internal EA devs for the PS3 version.
Also he's pretty moronic, surely his pride wouldn't allow a "console" developer to be better at making games than a "PC" developer, since thats basically what he's saying, there are hundreds of teams that are making incredible PS3 games, he must be really bad at his job.
Just because it's a port it doesn't mean that it's cheap to do. People have grossly inaccurate measurements of cost in this place, it's not like you spend $40k and you get a port, hell if you pay 40k you're either hiring one dev or two minimum wage devs to port an entire title over. You end up assigning teams to research and devote time to bringing the game over to the platform, an investment that can bite them if they're not producing enough games to pay off the cost of that initial research. Why could Valve not say the same about the 360 one might ask, well given the fact that XNA has been running strong thus far it's pretty easy to go and note that yeah costs are reduced greatly because of the toolset from the console developer. It's not because an IBM PPE unit = x86, not at all and anyone making that comparison is quite far off and should probably go educate themselves about the differences between PPC and PPE structures and x86. If they were so similar to begin with then people who tried for ages to emulate IBM calls would have had no problems in Virtual machines.
Given that Valve is an independent developer, they don't have the freedom to just throw around the company money on wild ventures hoping that some tech-demo engine will carry them through with an incredibly shallow storyline. Instead, they measure their audience constantly and develop titles based around that architecture so their fans can continue to enjoy gaming. Yeah EA publishes physical media for them, that's about all they do though. They didn't fund the orange box, they don't own Valve properties. Instead they just get something they can put in a pretty box.
In regard to having Sierra / Vivendi do the port, Sierra was a publisher not a developer, they were the former publishing partner to Valve. Given that it's doubtful they'd really have any better luck at it.
If anything it seems like most rage probaly comes from the lacking cross platform tools in the marketplace. Going on about how they're going to work to migrate things in the future is nice but the fact is, it's still not here, it wasn't there when the orange box came out and no one has a clue as to how much dev costs will be reduced with the kit at this point in time. Hopefully it does work well it doesn't cost an arm and a leg and devs do end up using it to port because it means they stand to make a larger pile of cash in the end to have them make sequels or new titles.
Yes, time=money in game development and if you have to spend more time learning a new CPU architecture then yes, it's going to end up meaning more money being used. HOWEVER the thing you overlook about this is that VALVe only has to figure out this new architecture once, the next time they go into porting a game they'll already have a good understanding of said architecture and there will be no need for extra money on the PS3 project versus the 360 project.
You seem to be simply defending Valve on the grounds that they are an amazing developer and make amazing games. No doubt they do. Valve's got to be one of my favorite PC game developers that has dished out quite possibly the best games of all time but that doesn't mean they're automatically free of ridicule.
Also, Valve has never been a console developer anyways, so it makes a lot of sense they wouldn't care much about these ports. Their home is on the PC more so than most other PC developers. It's a little thing called Steam and Valve has been pushing this digital distribution system for some time and I see them slowing down no time soon.
When it comes right down to it, it is laziness, especially when plenty of other much less adept developers compared to Valve have gotten a handle on the CELLs architecture just fine. Gabe's a grumpy dude, and what he says doesn't necessarily reflect the feelings of his co-workers.
Oh and you should get your facts straight, Valve has never done a game with DX10 effects, so your whole comment about trying to port "DX10 to DX9.oc" customers is absurd. Also, there's no depth of field in any of the games in Orange Box and only recently have they implemented a dynamic lighting into their games via the flashlight, about freaking time too. So how about you try to have some background before speaking.
Given the release schedules of Valve, the investment into the PS3 outweighs the benefit to them, if they had a functional kit in front of them to reduce time and cost they'd go along for it most likely, just as they went to the 360.
I didn't use amazing once, maybe you should invest in some glasses. I'm not going on about how magical they are, I'm just noting that people are quick to write off anything they do because they didn't get them to directly port a title to their console of choice. Assuming it's directly about you is comical at best, unless you're trying to defend all the others essentially going "OMG VALVE FTL"
Actually the source engine demo videos have shown that they're capable of implementing Depth of field into their titles, they showed off almost a year ago via a leaked demo of changes through the DoD previews. GG on being up to date. Maybe you can spend a bit of time researching the difference between x86 and PPC / PPE architectures in the meantime instead of rambling off and completely discrediting yourself.
Don't talk to me about glasses when you failed to comprehend my entire post.
Here's what you said
"Actually the source engine demo videos have shown that they're capable of implementing Depth of field into their titles"
Here's what I said
"Also, there's no depth of field in any of the games in Orange Box"
See how you failed at comprehension? The source engine is capable of a lot of things that aren't implemented in their games, and it's beyond me why. Especially the PC versions of those games.
I didn't discredit myself in the slightest, everything I said was true and stands still. The people that thumbed me down and thumbed you up clearly have even less of an idea about this stuff than you.
Also, I love valve, are you *bleep*ed, I addressed this.
I inferred that you were defending Valve based on everything you said because you had no reason to defend them other than the possibility that you came off as the kind of person that worships they ground they walk on. Gabe's comments were completely ridiculous when you take into consideration how talented Valve is and how much less talented other developers are that work with the PS3 and have no problem with it. It's simply ridiculous to think that Valve couldn't do extraordinary things on the PS3 given the hardware if they actually gave it the time of day.
Xbox 360 port: Use XNA
PS3 port: ...
the only time they really dug down with porting was in the original HL2 for the xbox.
If sony dishes out a solid port tool for devs I'd expect most companies to rush out for the extra money that the PS3 will bring them because they wont have to roll the dice on investing too much and getting nothing back.
It's all about the architecture of the PS3 versus your standard PC and the fact that these developers simply do not want to invest the time or money in learning how to program efficiently for this new architecture.
It's pathetic really.
Besides, I don't even think such a tool could be created that would improve this process that much, there's no way you're going to achieve anything good by simply using a tool to port a game on the PS3's architecture, it's just too different. You need to program specifically for it. That's why you see more developers (like Capcom) programming for PS3 first and then porting to 360.