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Valve's Gabe Newell Speaks on Console Development

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the steam-is-steamed dept.

DelitaTheFridge writes "Gabe Newell, of Valve fame, criticizes Microsoft and Sony on how difficult it will be for next-gen developers to produce games on their upcoming hardware. He is especially critical of Sony's model, where code written to run on Cell will be very hard to port to other systems, and vice versa. Will this bring upon a new era of PC Game superiority? Only time will tell. In the meantime, Newell says he believes that Steam-like systems will be extremely helpful for developers on the new consoles due to their ability to provide updates and new content."

10 of 529 comments (clear)

  1. Pots and Kettles by fembots · · Score: 3, Informative

    Steam-like systems

    You mean the one that forces you to "update" before you can play its game? This system is making a player's life difficult too.

    It's worth noting, however, that Valve is historically a PC games developer and has only made two console games thus far--Counter-Strike and Half-Life 2, both for Xbox.

    I think this line says it all - Valve is inexperienced in cross-platform console game development, and it's whinging about it. Kind of reminds me of Alternative Browsers Impede Investigations

    --
    Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
    1. Re:Pots and Kettles by yoyhed · · Score: 3, Informative
      You mean the one that forces you to "update" before you can play its game?

      I seem to recall a little option for each Steam game, oh what was it called? Oh yeah.. Do Not Automatically Update This Game.. It's available under Properties (right-click) of any game in Steam. And online games probably should have Automatic updating on, but if you don't like new models and features and bug fixes, then turn it off for your single-player games.

      --
      WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
    2. Re:Pots and Kettles by aklix · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes this is a repost... please don't mod me down, but feel free not to mod me up, I just think the information is much needed. You don't NEED to update your games in steam, well, atleast single player games. 1. Open Steam 2. Open "Play Games" list 3. Right click on Half-Life 2 4. Choose "Properties" 5. Select "Do not automatically keep this game up to date" 6. ... 7. PROFIT!

    3. Re:Pots and Kettles by delus10n0 · · Score: 3, Informative
      - having to have an internet connection to play the single player game, and spending several hours waiting for it to decrypt when I bought it release day


      Decryption didn't take that long, I remember it being 30 minutes or something like that. Who cares? Also, you do not need an internet connection to play single player-- there is "Offline Mode", read up on SteamPowered.com's FAQs.

      - how they first required both steam activation AND a dvd check for the store-bought version


      Not Valve's fault-- the publisher's fault. You could have just bought the Steam version..

      - that I can't resell my copy of HL2 when I get bored with it


      You should do a survey to see how often people really do this, especially with games of this quality-- don't we all still have our Doom and Duke3d boxes? Even Wolf3d?

      - that when steam goes belly-up, I can't play (had that problem at a LAN party, massive counter-strike problems for lots of people as the net connection couldn't handle steam logins for 200 ppl)


      This gets brought up all the time-- if Valve/Steam went "belly up", I'm sure they would release an official fix, or some bright individual out there will figure one out. Sheesh. Your problems at the LAN probably stemmed from not reading SteamPowered.com's guide on running in offline mode.

      - mandatory patches tying up my internet connection unexpectedly, a real problem for dialup users


      You can choose in a game's properties to NOT keep it up to date, and patches will not be automatically downloaded. Half-Life2's box says it recommends a highspeed internet connection, and so does SteamPowered.com's "Get Steam Now!" page.

      - piracy protection that does nothing to stop hacked copies showing up on torrent sites, but makes me jump through hoops


      This is like the "iTunes" of online games-- I legally bought HL2 (the gold package) and have never had a problem playing the game, getting updates, or getting the new games when they come out (HL2 Multiplayer, Blue Shift.. and soon Lost Coast and DOD:S) I'd say it's a success for paying users. The copies you're taling about (pirated ones) suffer from no auto updates, no Steam interface, little/no mod support, and you certainly can't play online. Pfft.

      -randomly losing my installed game files, forcing me to spend hours downloading and reinstalling the game via steam (happened to me twice now)


      Sounds like you've got hardware problems-- check the SteamPowered.com forums for other people having similiar issues, and you might want to fill out a support ticket, that's what they are for.
      --
      Not All Who Wander Are Lost
    4. Re:Pots and Kettles by HD+Webdev · · Score: 4, Informative

      i agree completely. i will NEVER buy anything from valve EVER as long as steam is required. what really pissed me off was the fact that the original HL2 retail box didnt mention an internet connection being a game requirement.

      It did. If you don't believe me, check out the http://steampowered.com/ forums. People that did complain were told to look again at their retail boxes. Guess what they found?

      --
      This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
  2. Actually by Solr_Flare · · Score: 3, Informative

    Say what you will about Gabe and Valve, he is very correct about both systems. In Microsoft's case, they've made things a pain for developers by having two different models with and without a hard drive.

    In the case of the PS3 and Cell, it is different enough in design from "traditional" architecture that cross platform development for it is going to be a nightmare.

    --
    You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
    1. Re:Actually by Osty · · Score: 5, Informative

      In Microsoft's case, they've made things a pain for developers by having two different models with and without a hard drive.

      It's only a pain if developers want to use the hard drive as more than a glorified memory card. Otherwise, there's no problem. Developers have said that Microsoft has been telling them for a while now to design their games to work without the a hard drive. If developers choose to ignore that advice (and it's questionable whether that's just advice or if it's part of the certification program required to release a game for the platform), they have no one to blame but themselves. Consumers have every right to feel screwed by Microsoft making the hard drive optional, but developers have no right to complain. Besides, doubling the RAM from 256MB to 512MB is a much more useful change for developers than a standard hard drive, so they can't complain that Microsoft isn't listening to their feedback either.

      In the case of the PS3 and Cell, it is different enough in design from "traditional" architecture that cross platform development for it is going to be a nightmare.

      The PS2 is "different enough" as well, and yet that hasn't stopped anybody from building cross-platform games. Frameworks that abstract out the underlying implementation details will pop up soon enough. The real question is whether or not Sony is going to provide a good SDK to get new developers started. They didn't do that with the PS2, which really hurt their launch line-up and had the effect of removing smaller developers from the market because they couldn't afford to take the time to build their own framework or to buy one from someone else. Microsoft has always been very developer-friendly, and one would expect that to continue with the 360. With the next gen consoles being relatively equal in power, providing a good SDK and developer support will be a key factor in getting good games on the new platforms and in winning exclusive third-party games for their respective consoles.

    2. Re:Actually by PsychicX · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just so people know exactly what it is that Newell is complaining about: Cell architectural info.

  3. Video Interview by DrIdiot · · Score: 5, Informative
    http://valve.1up.com/flat/Themeweek/Valve/video6.h tml
    There's the actual video interview.

    I spoke to some people at Microsoft, and as I said, I can't point to a single feature in Vista that I care about that solves problems for us.
    I can't see a single feature in Vista that solves any problems I've had with Windows on the consumer's side either.

    And I totally see why Sony wants people to write code that runs on seven SPEs and a central processing unit, because that code is never going to run well anywhere else
    You can say the same about DirectX. You can never run DirectX on anything but Windows. (WINE doesn't count). This is common practice, it happens with proprietary formats, why wouldn't it happen with game consoles?

  4. Re:c'mon by FLAGGR · · Score: 3, Informative

    Exactly. To a non-coder it sounds like a walk in the park eh j3rry?. The x360 is, what, a triple core powerpc chip, and the PS3 is a less powerful chip, almost identical to one of the x360 cores, but with 7 SPE's (the S stands for stupid, not synergistic or whatever the fuck their marketroids named em)

    These consoles are taking the idea of multithreading to the max, and both are taking very different approaches. Porting between the consoles was hard enough this gen (xbox getting good pc ports as it pretty much was a pc, the gcn being a ppc and the ps2 being made by sony, who can never make anything easy to develop for, and required alot of assembly code and hand vectorization to get a game working well on the already slower hardware) but now we've got not just different architectures to support, but completly and totally different programming models to support.