In the last console generation, Valve expanded on its PC focus with Xbox 360 and PS3 ports of hit games like The Orange Box, Portal 2, and the Left 4 Dead series. In a wide-ranging media roundtable this week, however, Valve’s Gabe Newell said the consoles’ “walled garden” isn’t a place he’s eager to revisit. Some of his complaints, though, seem a little outdated now that we’re well into a new console generation.
Newell suggested that people he’s worked with on the console side seemed a bit retrograde in their thinking on business models. “We get really frustrated working in walled gardens,” he said, as reported by Eurogamer. “So you try to talk to someone who’s doing product planning on a console about free-to-play games and they say, ‘Oh, we’re not sure free-to-play is a good idea’ and you’re like, ‘The ship has left.'”
That console free-to-play resistance may have been truer in 2012, when Valve last ported a game to home consoles (Counter-Strike: GO). In the years since, though, both Sony and Microsoft seem much more willing to embrace full games that can be played without paying a cent. Popular free-to-play PC titles like World of Tanks, Hawken, and Smite are all doing well on both the PS4 and Xbox One. Both console makers have also invested in a few free-to-play exclusives in recent years: Gigantic and Happy Wars on the Xbox One and Planetside 2 and Let It Die on the PS4, to name some examples.
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Source: Ars Technica – Valve is still frustrated with console game development