toblix

Portal 2

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I think Valve is doing STRANGE AND BIZARRE things that will immediately become the de facto expectation of everyone, to the chagrin of the entire industry.

Because when you think about it, if Gamestop is foaming at the mouth that it will stop selling Steam-enabled games (like a spoiled, neurotic asshole child whose abandoned toys are embraced by other kinds on the playground), and when publishers are trying to make it impossible to resell games because technically they've been selling the license to play for years now rather than own a piece of media, why not make it possible to play on whatever? If you're gonna lock a copy of a game to me for all eternity, why do I have to have a dozen copies of it?

Plus, it is like a gateway drug for a whole demographic of people who have never played games on their internet machines. It's a win-win for Valve.

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Yeah, Valve pretty much blew everyone away with this bit of news.

So Xbox will not have this feature, Sony propably paid something for this exclusivity, right?

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I've no idea if it's part of a deal between Sony and Valve, but it undoubtedly would have been much harder to do this for the Xbox 360 anyway. I think this is all coming from the fact that the PS3 version of Portal 2 has full Steamworks and so forth and I think Valve gets to control the patching of it. Valve was always complaining that patching their games on the 360 was too difficult and took too long and they weren't allowed to do as much free stuff as they wanted and so on and so on, that's why the 360 versions of TF2, L4D, etc. are all so antiquated compared to the PC versions.

So in summary I don't know if Sony had to pay or if they just had to make the smart decision to let Valve have free reign and open technical control, but either way I get the feeling the PS3 sales of Portal 2 just got a substantial bump.

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saw this news earlier today.

What I find really interesting is that they say that your saves on PS3 will be saved on the steam cloud as well. Could this potentially mean that I can play my game on my PS3 and then continue from where I left off on my PC? that would be awesome as I don't always have access to my PS3 or my PC on certain days during the week. :D

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What I find really interesting is that they say that your saves on PS3 will be saved on the steam cloud as well. Could this potentially mean that I can play my game on my PS3 and then continue from where I left off on my PC?

I can't see why not. I don't know if they will make it happen but at least it should be possible.

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What I find really interesting is that they say that your saves on PS3 will be saved on the steam cloud as well. Could this potentially mean that I can play my game on my PS3 and then continue from where I left off on my PC? that would be awesome as I don't always have access to my PS3 or my PC on certain days during the week. :D

I bet that it will be so, because what other reason could they have to store your saves in the cloud, or advertise that feature? You probably won't use the same PSN account on multiple PS3s.

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Other than price, is there any reason to buy it on PC if you have both a PS3 and PC? I do, and the idea of being able to play coop with someone else in the room, one on PC one on PS3 is pretty awesome.

To answer my own question; preorder bonuses and price I guess.

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I do, and the idea of being able to play coop with someone else in the room, one on PC one on PS3 is pretty awesome.

That's actually exactly what I plan to do, I have a friend of mine who loves Portal but hates thumbsticks. Local co-op without splitscreen or a need for him to learn to use a thumbstick? Yes please.

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Are you sure there will be cross-platform scheiße of that ilk? Are there any games that let you play against people on other platforms anyway? Besides, don't you need two licenses to play with someone?

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Yes

Portal 2 on PS3 will support cross-platform multiplayer and chat with the PC and Mac releases, plus cloud-based saved game storage. As if that weren't exciting enough, you'll also get a free SteamPlay version of the game for PC and Mac.

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So Xbox will not have this feature, Sony propably paid something for this exclusivity, right?

I don't really know a lot about this stuff first hand, but I've been around a couple games going through approval/certification for XBLA and PSN, and I've read plenty of peoples stories on various dev forums and games related blogs so while I don't know for certain any of what I'm writing, I think you're a little off base assuming that it was a paid deal.

I think its more likely that this just comes down to Sony not giving a damn what people do with their network. Games on PSN seem to be able to do funkier things because Sony doesn't care as much, or "allows it." Games can load web content directly from the publisher/developer more indiscriminately over PSN, for instance. It seems you can more easily get away with letting your game code look at PSN data like leaderboards and actually use that data for other things (I'm guessing that's why only the PSN version of Swarm is going to have a "cumulative Swarm guys killed across all players ever" persistent counter, while the 360 won't). Their online certification requirements aregenerally just less locked down than those for Xbox Live. I don't think from a financial buy-off standpoint Sony particularly cares one way or another if a third party publisher is integrating their self-published game with their self-run online network. Microsoft, on the other hand, cares more than anyone else ever about ensuring that they are the only online service on their hardware, so I don't think any amount of money would have made the deal happen on the 360... at least until/unless its a success and deemed a necessity due to it doing well on PS3. The upside to Microsoft's enforcement is of course that you only ever have to worry about one login and one bandwidth provider and one network and one online currency and one common interface across all games. Gamers clearly appreciate that since Sony over the lifespan of the PS3 has been building more and more common cross-game UI into the PS3's operating system... the big difference being that still only a portion of that common functionality is mandatory. At least that's how I think it works.

The notion of console exclusives has, I guess, irrevocably wrecked gamers perception of how things work. If there is ever any disparity in features between SKUs, the default assumption is "X bought off Y so they would make the game work better for X's console." Obviously that may have happened here, but my gut says that isn't the case. Its bold to go further than that maybe but I feel like if money were to change hands at all here, it would be the other way around -- "we'll cut you a deal and give you a discount on fees if you publish your guaranteed hot selling game on our system, even though you won't be able to support all the features you want."

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I don't really know a lot about this stuff first hand, but I've been around a couple games going through approval/certification for XBLA and PSN, and I've read plenty of peoples stories on various dev forums and games related blogs so while I don't know for certain any of what I'm writing, I think you're a little off base assuming that it was a paid deal.

I think its more likely that this just comes down to Sony not giving a damn what people do with their network. Games on PSN seem to be able to do funkier things because Sony doesn't care as much, or "allows it." Games can load web content directly from the publisher/developer more indiscriminately over PSN, for instance. It seems you can more easily get away with letting your game code look at PSN data like leaderboards and actually use that data for other things (I'm guessing that's why only the PSN version of Swarm is going to have a "cumulative Swarm guys killed across all players ever" persistent counter, while the 360 won't). Their online certification requirements aregenerally just less locked down than those for Xbox Live. I don't think from a financial buy-off standpoint Sony particularly cares one way or another if a third party publisher is integrating their self-published game with their self-run online network. Microsoft, on the other hand, cares more than anyone else ever about ensuring that they are the only online service on their hardware, so I don't think any amount of money would have made the deal happen on the 360... at least until/unless its a success and deemed a necessity due to it doing well on PS3. The upside to Microsoft's enforcement is of course that you only ever have to worry about one login and one bandwidth provider and one network and one online currency and one common interface across all games. Gamers clearly appreciate that since Sony over the lifespan of the PS3 has been building more and more common cross-game UI into the PS3's operating system... the big difference being that still only a portion of that common functionality is mandatory. At least that's how I think it works.

The notion of console exclusives has, I guess, irrevocably wrecked gamers perception of how things work. If there is ever any disparity in features between SKUs, the default assumption is "X bought off Y so they would make the game work better for X's console." Obviously that may have happened here, but my gut says that isn't the case. Its bold to go further than that maybe but I feel like if money were to change hands at all here, it would be the other way around -- "we'll cut you a deal and give you a discount on fees if you publish your guaranteed hot selling game on our system, even though you won't be able to support all the features you want."

I don't know if there would have been money changing hands here, if anything I would probably expect that Sony just went ahead an said to Valve, if you put Portal 2 on the PS3 you can do whatever you want with our system, or maybe it's a test to see if a Steam model can work for retail console games, with the PC version of Portal 2 included I expect that the game won't be able to be sold pre-owned and will be tied to one's PSN/Steam account. Publishers are clearly pushing for a Steam style system with the various project ten dollars coming from major publishers.

Whatever it is, it's an interesting move to say the least.

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blablabla

This is my impression as well. Microsoft seems really strict about what you can do and what you have to do to publish on their platform. Doesn't every game, regardless of anything, have to have a leaderboard or some stupid thing? I might've made that up.

Anyway, hasn't Ubisoft and EA gotten away with their own stuff on the Xbox, with the user logging on to their own services (Uplay, Fifa, etc.)?

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Holy crap.

This is basically how I wish every game in the world was sold. When I buy something I want to own it everywhere I possibly can and have it work everywhere it can and with everyone it can. I really hope this goes well and becomes a standard, at the least for Valve games.

It's a good idea, but will it work the other way? As in, I buy the game on Steam and then get a PS3 code.

I doubt it.

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It's a good idea, but will it work the other way? As in, I buy the game on Steam and then get a PS3 code.

I doubt it.

No, but the steam copy will probably be cheaper.

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if by cheaper you mean 50 dollars as opposed to 60, sure, but I wouldn't expect anything more then that at launch

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if by cheaper you mean 50 dollars as opposed to 60, sure, but I wouldn't expect anything more then that at launch
Yeah, but if I wait three months, the PC version will be $30 and the PS3 will still be $60.

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and one online currency

Sorry, I think you meant one PLASTIC waste-producing currency that is the worst fucking idea ever* :P

* I live in a country where I can't use my credit card for points purchasing so I always have to get the plastic version, which is just a whole lot of fucking useless bullshit packaging (even if I buy it online, someone else bought the plastic and scanned the code I think).

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Sorry, I think you meant one PLASTIC waste-producing currency that is the worst fucking idea ever* :P

* I live in a country where I can't use my credit card for points purchasing so I always have to get the plastic version, which is just a whole lot of fucking useless bullshit packaging (even if I buy it online, someone else bought the plastic and scanned the code I think).

I'm not a huge fan of MS points either, but it is undeniably exclusive and unified across the 360 platform!

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Well in any case it's a really cool idea that there is cross platform possibility here, Playstation and PC gamers can play together.

I think the only time I remember this happening before was Quake 3 Arena on Dreamcast and PC back in the year 2000?

DC sure was a sweet gaming machine, Sega always did a lot of things first during those times that became industry standards years later.

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I think the only time I remember this happening before was Quake 3 Arena on Dreamcast and PC back in the year 2000?

Somehow you must have missed 2007 GOTY contender Shadowrun.

Some G4-affiliated site summed things up accurately last week:

More recently a little game called Shadowrun tried to do this via Games For Windows Live but there was a huge imbalance between PC gamers and Xbox 360 gamers. Though Shadowrun was more of a versus style deathmatch game. Portal 2's integration is said to be on the cooperative aspects of the game so perhaps it will work better when there isn't a clear cut disadvantage for one segment of gamers.

The secret word here is co-op. Although, I wonder if it's possible to improvise a Portal deathmatch by carrying turrets everywhere and running towards your partner.

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I'm torn. I don't want to throw off Valve's metrics and tell them that I'm a console gamer, and I want more money to go to the developer directly. But I think there's no way in hell that Sony will allow this kind of Steam Play push from the other direction and if I want the game on all of my devices it's best for me to buy it on PS3.

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I'm torn. I don't want to throw off Valve's metrics and tell them that I'm a console gamer, and I want more money to go to the developer directly. But I think there's no way in hell that Sony will allow this kind of Steam Play push from the other direction and if I want the game on all of my devices it's best for me to buy it on PS3.

Valve tracks more than what you buy. They track what you play. Creepy creepy, or whatever, but that does mean that you can buy it on PS3, and then clock 300 hours of it on your PC, and Valve will figure it out.

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Jake's assertions about PSN are spot on. Sony are pretty relaxed about online implmentation, so much so that an accidental or purposeful disconnection (your ISP were to go down or you removed the ethernet cable for example) from an online game that crashes the game on the system where it occurred is not viewed as a failure at submission.

I am happy this is happening though, it would be nice to see if this forces Microsoft's hand.

I finished Portal yesterday, finally, it is one of the first games to give me severe motion sickness. It sort of dragged on a little at the end (this happened for me in HL2 too) but otherwise a very pleasant few hours.

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