When Gabe Newell made the surprise E3 announcement that Portal 2 was coming to the PS3, he promised that it would be the best console version of the game. He wasn’t kidding around!
More exciting than just the mere fact that Portal 2 would be coming to the PS3 — a platform Newell had grown famous for slamming repeatedly, remember — was the announcement that Valve was working closely with Sony to bring Steam to the PS3, the service’s first appearance on a console. Today, Valve has outlined the specific Steam features Portal 2 players will be able to take advantage of on their PS3.
Those features include persistent cloud storage of saved games, cross-platform play and chat between PS3 and PC/Mac players, and a free Steam Play copy of the game to download on PC & Mac for those who buy the game new and link their PSN and Steam accounts together. That’s three platforms in one! Pretty sweet, huh?
Newell also says Valve hopes to expand the service through future DLC, so it sounds like more is yet to come.
“We made a promise to gamers at E3 that Portal 2 for the PlayStation 3 would be the best console version of the product,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. “Working together with Sony we have identified a set of features we believe are very compelling to gamers. We hope to expand upon the foundation being laid in Portal 2 with more Steam features and functionality in DLC and future content releases.”
“We designed the Portal 2 PS3 experience to be very straightforward for gamers,” said Josh Weier, project lead on Portal 2 at Valve. “PS3 gamers will be able to simply drop the Blu-Ray disc in the PS3, link to their Steam account from inside the game, and all their Steam friends (on PC and Mac) will be visible and accessible for chat and game invites.”
Portal 2 warps into stores in April for Mac, PC, Xbox 360 and of course, PS3. Which platform will you be playing on?