Why Valve doesn't make PS3 games

Valve doesn't make games for the PlayStation 3, they only make them for the Xbox 360 and PC, so although some Valve games inevitably do make it on to the PlayStation 3 Valve actually doesn't work on them at all. Instead, the PS3 versions of Valve games are ported by publisher Electronic Arts.

And if you wanted to know why they don't create games for the PlayStation 3 then Valve's Tom Leonard has spilled some answers, doing so quite brutally in a comment to Loot Ninja.

"The PC and the 360 are just more straightforward," claimed Tom, simply. "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 there you have it - a clear explanation of why Valve doesn't work on or support the PS3. Tom doesn't stand alone in his opinion either, with Valve founder Gabe Newell having explicitly hit out at Sony in the past by calling the PlayStation 3 a "a waste of everybody's time". Ouch.

This, combined with the face that EA's PS3 ports of previous Valve titles have met with some technical issues, means that there's unlikely to be a PlayStation 3 version of Left 4 Dead any time soon.

Let us know your thoughts on the PlayStation 3 in the forums.