Valve announced at E3 that the PlayStation 3 version of Portal 2 would be the superior version of the game, but it’s only recently that we’ve begun to find out exactly why. Not only will there be cross platform play, custom level creation, and a free steam copy included with every purchase of the PS3 version, but it will also be updated more often than the 360 version.
It seems that Sony can be thanked for the ability to have frequent updates, since they have far less red tape for a developer to deal with when providing them for us. This may also be the reason Steam will be available for PlayStation 3 when the Portal 2 releases. Valve writer Chet Faliszek told CVG recently about the updates while assuring them that the actual game content will be identical across all platforms.
If you bought the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions and put them side by side you can see they’re identical games. The actual content is the same too across all platforms.
With the PS3 we can update more often, we don’t have to have someone else gate that ability. We can play between the PC and PS3 players because we can update more frequently. That’s our thing, we don’t want to hurt one platform for the other and now that we can update more frequently it’s easier for us to [avoid] that.
Then we added things like chat between the platforms, Steam Cloud for the PS3. Sony has been really great to work with, they’ve been really supportive and helpful for us to do this.
This is definitely an ambitious set of features Valve is planning on including in the game. The game itself looks fantastic, and it should be really interesting to see how cross platform play works out when it releases. Hopefully the frequent updates are more content rich, and not necessary for fixing bugs, but it’s nice to know that they’ll be able to fix things readily if there are issues. We’ve also managed to dig up some screen shots of Portal 2, so give them a look and let us know what you think!
