1) Cross platform availability is amazing. There's been a number of times when I've wished I had a game on PC that I bought on a console instead, and it's awesome to see this available now. I would have never predicted they'd offer something this nice, but they have. I'll probably purchase more PS3 games if they offer this, because it means I can play it on my choice of platform.
2) What about saves? It's nice to have it available to play for both, but if I can't continue where I left off, then this is somewhat less useful.
3) This is going to cause some issues in competitive FPSes if from cross platform play is enabled. Keyboard and mouse have been shown to general outperform controls (not to mention bots and hacks being easier to get on PC), and I wouldn't be surprised to see some outrage from console gamers.
4) And last, holy crap this is awesome I love Valve and Steam is just completely wonderful. </fanboy>
The interesting thing here is that with the PS3, it's very easy to add a mouse and keyboard, as the console supports pretty much any class-compliant USB model. Epic Games actually tried this a few years ago with Unreal Tournament III, though I don't think it supported cross-platform multiplayer.
It's not clear exactly if there will actually be cross-platform play or if Valve simply decided to give PS3 gamers a free Steam copy, which they would have to play on a PC. It looks as though there will be some chat integration, though.
"Cross Platform Play" is in all the titles I've seen, so I have to assume that there's going to be cross-platform play. Newell also talks about game invites, which are part of initiating a game with someone.
Portal should work well in cross-platform play since there's no direct competition: Quake III (IIRC) PC players absolutely dominated Dreamcast players. Collaboration removes the importance of this competitive edge.
Cross-platform play could also mean just PC-Mac. I'd just like to know if there aren't any 'gotchas', marketing folks are prone to these kinds of "soft lies" (remember BF2's 'dedicated servers'?)
“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.”
1) Cross platform availability is amazing. There's been a number of times when I've wished I had a game on PC that I bought on a console instead, and it's awesome to see this available now. I would have never predicted they'd offer something this nice, but they have. I'll probably purchase more PS3 games if they offer this, because it means I can play it on my choice of platform.
2) What about saves? It's nice to have it available to play for both, but if I can't continue where I left off, then this is somewhat less useful.
3) This is going to cause some issues in competitive FPSes if from cross platform play is enabled. Keyboard and mouse have been shown to general outperform controls (not to mention bots and hacks being easier to get on PC), and I wouldn't be surprised to see some outrage from console gamers.
4) And last, holy crap this is awesome I love Valve and Steam is just completely wonderful. </fanboy>