At last summer’s E3 event, Valve co-founder and president promised that the insanely anticipated release of Portal 2 for Playstation 3 would feature Steam support to allow for cross-platform mutiplayer gaming. Valve had been mum on the subject since that promise until earlier today when the support was made official via a press release.
When Portal 2 ships for PS3 this April, players on that console will be able to join in multiplayer matches and chat with adversaries or friends on the PC or Mac downloadable versions of the game. A physical disc will still be required for the PS3 version, but anyone who purchases the PS3 version will receive a key to download the PC version for free and either keep or give to a friend.
In addition to cross-platform gaming via Steam, the PS3 version of Portal 2 will allow players to store their saved games and settings via Valve’s Steamworks cloud-based storage system. Those with PS3 consoles with older and smaller hard-drives won’t have to worry about Portal 2 eating into whatever available space is left.
Portal 2 will also be available for Xbox 360 in April but it will not support Steam and cross-platform gaming. This agreement is strictly, for now, between Valve and Sony.
The ramifications of what Valve and Sony are doing with Portal 2 and Steam could be substantial to the future evolution of console gaming. While Microsoft has struggled to bring together gamers on Xbox Live and Windows Live, Sony and Valve could build an infrastructure where the PC version of a PS3 game becomes like the digital copy of a movie included with most new theatrical Blu-ray Disc releases. Upon purchase of a PS3 game, you could load it up on your PC and seamlessly jump between the two.
The cloud-based storage system for saves, settings, etc. could have a huge ramification on the next generation of consoles with the assumption they’ll eventually arrive. If gamers required a much smaller hard-drive and could store their saves and games on a cloud-server – where it would be backed up and accessible from multiple locations – then the hard drive costs of the console would drop dramatically. The overall size would decrease, too, offering more room for advanced CPU cooling.
Digital downloads of games and cloud-based storage ushering the slow death of physical discs should be a hot topic at E3 this June.
