Left 4 Dead not for PS3

By Robert Purchese Published 22 February, 2008

Valve favouring PC, 360.

Valve has confirmed that it has no plans for a PS3 version of Left 4 Dead.

Spokesperson Doug Lombardi said the developer had "limited interest" in working on the platform, and only offered Orange Box on PS3 because Electronic Arts had asked and taken care of it itself.

"EA wanted to do Orange Box on PS3 and they handled it," Doug Lombardi told videogaming247. "Left 4 Dead isn't coming out on PS3 because we've not had that call. If the phone rang we would have the conversation, certainly, but it hasn't happened."

Traditionally Valve has had a hard time working on consoles, according to Lombardi, and struggled developing Half-Life for Xbox many moons ago.

But the developer has since expanded and put together an Xbox 360 team to create console code side-by-side with its PC counterparts. And this is how Valve plans to stay for the time being, so any PS3 versions will have to be handled by a third-party.

Left 4 Dead is a sumptuous squad-based shooter that pits a group of survivors against the Infected, or zombies as we like to call them.

The interesting part is that not only can you join your friends on the survivor side, but you can also join others as the Infected. These consist of rank and file zombies that die as quickly as extras (you re-spawn as another upon re-death), but there are also boss types as well as others that act has walking time bombs.

You can play it on your own, or with the computer controlling the Infected - there should be difficultly levels hard enough for even the tightest team to be swamped in.

For those reasons and more, Left 4 Dead is already a well-tipped game of the year by many of us.

Left 4 Dead is due out in late summer on PC and 360, as Valve is taking its time to make sure everything is balanced and sparkly.

Pop over to our Left 4 Dead gamepage for shots and videos and cocktail sausages.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (63) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • hiddenranbir #1 4 years ago

    Understandable since Doug hates the way PS3 has been designed.

    PC ftw!

  • asphaltcowboy #2 4 years ago

    Oh snap!

    (Will the 360 version have splitscreen btw?)

  • HarryPalmer #3 4 years ago

    Valve hate PS3. Shame.

  • Dizzy #4 4 years ago

    Obviously.

    Missing GOTY again ;)

  • septimus #5 4 years ago

    Valve - shit at console.

    Nothing valve will develop will push the 360 either. They should just stick to PC.

  • christourlord #6 4 years ago

    "They should just stick to PC"

    Yes, please keep your amazingly good games off our consoles, Valve!

  • seasidebaz #7 4 years ago

    i know the answer!

    gabe newell eats too many pies, doesn't want to get grease on the ps3's shiny exterior.

    either that or he's just bitter that visual c++ won't recompile into ps3speak

  • JonFE #8 4 years ago

    Ouch!

  • Dizzy #9 4 years ago

    >gabe newell eats too many pies

    Is that the best you can do m8? Make a reference to the guy being "fat". You are surely one of our best forum debaters. Keep it up.

  • Turambar #10 4 years ago

    Well it's not news that the powers that be at valve dislike the PS3 for some reason.

  • cw- #11 4 years ago

    Can't wait for this game! Looks fantastic, really looking forward to playing it online. Will hopefully work in an organised fashion for clan matches too.

  • Xerx3s #12 4 years ago

    "Yes, please keep your amazingly good games off our consoles, Valve! "

    They are entertaining but calling them amazingly good is stretching it a bit.

  • rashes #13 4 years ago

    @septimus

    I imagine the orange box made them more money on the 360 this year, than on PC?
    On and by the way, the source engine isn't exactly pushing 360 or PC hardware to the limit!!

  • Dizzy #14 4 years ago

    >They are entertaining but calling them amazingly good is stretching it a bit.

    True..they only won a few GOTYs.

  • seasidebaz #15 4 years ago

    @Dizzy: i would have thought of a better response but work is sapping my will to live...

    hopefully, though, the game will come out on ps3 and just be coded by ea instead, like orange box was, providing they don't balls it all up again

    edit: additions: i think the main reason they have problems doing console work is cos they do some pretty amazing stuff with directx (like implementing hdr when directx couldn't even do it properly at the time), the engine itself is apparently highly scalable (although won't run on my laptop...) and the work porting it over to a machine that can't do the same things is probably too much for what (i imagine) is a comparatively small team
    Edited by 1 at 22/02/08 @ 10:44

  • viper_h #16 4 years ago

    > Well it's not news that the powers that be at valve dislike the PS3 for some reason.

    Maybe the reason is because it's a festering turd of a console with no games...

  • QPRHOOPS81 #17 4 years ago

    as long as games come out on at least one of the PC and PS3 im very happy.

  • skillian #18 4 years ago

    calling them amazingly good is stretching it a bit

    It's really not.

    I imagine the orange box made them more money on the 360 this year, than on PC?

    That's a good question, and one they'll probably never answer. They like to keep Steam sales pretty close to their chests it seems.
    Edited by 1 at 22/02/08 @ 10:48

  • Wash #19 4 years ago

    Spose it was inevitiable, makes sense to develop for what your coders are more familiar with. Dunno how good the game will be tho.

    Valve have made some great games tho, Half Life, Portal, Team Fortress - certainly in the higher echelon of FPS games ever made if not to everyones taste.

    Have they ever made anything thats not an FPS.

    Also the engine is starting to show its age.

  • oreillymj #20 4 years ago

    I wonder will Valve/ Gabe Newell end up regretting this decision in a years time.

    As Infinity ward have admitted, piracy is rampant in the PC gaming market, and sales are probably about 10% of the same game on X360 or PS3.

    If you accept that console sales are probably going to make up 80% of total sales, then Valve are basically giving 2 fingers to 30%-40% of the potential market.

    Good luck to them if they can afford to do that.

    At the current rate of attrition, I'd give the PC gaming market 5years before it ends up being too small to be profitable.
    Edited by 1 at 22/02/08 @ 10:50

  • skillian #21 4 years ago

    I'd give the PC gaming market 5years before it ends up being to small to be profitable.

    That's nice of you. Perhaps you could give me an extra year or two, I quite like gaming on my PC.

  • Freelancepolice #22 4 years ago

    @oreillymj

    You do realize the amount of money valve pull in with steam don't you?

  • brooza #23 4 years ago

    "the Infected, or zombies as we like to call them."

    Yet you keep calling them "Infected"

  • Whizzo #24 4 years ago

    Good luck to them if they can afford to do that.
    With 15 million Steam accounts I think they're probably not going to go broke any time soon.

  • UncleLou #25 4 years ago

    At the current rate of attrition, I'd give the PC gaming market 5years before it ends up being too small to be profitable

    How can a growing market become smaller? I don't understand it.

  • oreillymj #26 4 years ago

    Perhaps I'll be proven wrong, but more gamers are moving away from PC to consoles each generation. Perhaps that's because console are becoming more PC-like, but I'm sure it's also because of the lower piracy rates.

    @skillian - you're welcome. Anything else I can help you with ;-)


    BTW - 15 million users does not equal 15 million sales. I have a Skype account I've used twice.
    Edited by 1 at 22/02/08 @ 11:30

  • penhalion #27 4 years ago

    wow! some bitter people here. All the guy is saying is that Valve will not personally handle any PS3 version of the game. He didn't insult the PS3 (well not today anyway) nor did he rule out a PS3 version. He just gave a straight answer, which is that they (Valve) don't have a PS3 team and so will not be doing the PS3 version. If EA call and ask for the codebase in order to do the PS3 version in-house, then he'll do what he did with orange box i.e. cut a royalties deal and get on with his life.

  • Katsumoto #28 4 years ago

    @ generic naysayer - You do realise pc games sales still account for close to a billion dollars per year in America alone?

    Sounds pretty profitable to me! And that is only taking into account retail figures as well.
    Edited by 3 at 22/02/08 @ 11:34

  • Whizzo #29 4 years ago

    BTW - 15 million users does not equal 15 million sales. I have a Skype account I've used twice.
    No shit Sherlock but if you've got a Steam title you really do have to use it or you can't play the game, with Steamworks being freely available the numbers of titles that are likely to go to that service is likely to increase and piracy of those titles will be practically zero.

  • Dizzy #30 4 years ago

    "Perhaps I'll be proven wrong, but more gamers are moving away from PC to consoles each generation"

    World of Warcraft disagrees.

  • Kenshin001 #31 4 years ago

    Blerk said: February 22nd, 2008 at 9:44 am
    “We’re not bringing any more games to PS3, because Gabe threatened to sit on us if we did”, shuddered Lombardi.

    Haha. Nice one.

  • SBfistfun #32 4 years ago

    pwnd!

  • Moonprince #33 4 years ago

    "piracy of those titles will be practically zero. "

    lol! good1

  • OllyJ #34 4 years ago

    is L4D a boxed game or DLC? on 360...

  • cw- #35 4 years ago

    BTW - 15 million users does not equal 15 million sales. I have a Skype account I've used twice.

    15 million accounts, taking into account people with more than 1 account and those that don't use it. You're still looking at over 14 million. CS has over a billion hours play time a month last time I looked.

    And the money doesn't just come from Steam users, but publishers have to pay Valve to release their games via Steam.

    Perhaps I'll be proven wrong, but more gamers are moving away from PC to consoles each generation. Perhaps that's because console are becoming more PC-like, but I'm sure it's also because of the lower piracy rates.
    No idea where you're getting that from? PC users are more likely to have a PC AND console, not jump ship.

    Piracy rates affects what platform consumers buy how exactly? Or have I missunderstood your point there?

  • cw- #36 4 years ago

    @ Olly: 360 will be boxed. It's a full game, not an XBLA game.

  • LHH #37 4 years ago

    I wonder if Gabe used to working at Microsoft has anything to do with it. Helping out an old pal or something.

    /doubt it.

  • skillian #38 4 years ago

    oreillymj: As Infinity ward have admitted, piracy is rampant in the PC gaming market, and sales are probably about 10% of the same game on X360 or PS3.

    If you accept that console sales are probably going to make up 80% of total sales, then Valve are basically giving 2 fingers to 30%-40% of the potential market.

    Good luck to them if they can afford to do that.

    rashes: I imagine the orange box made them more money on the 360 this year, than on PC?

    See this interview: [link url=http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2008/02/21/gd c_will_steam_add_movies_music/
    ]http://ww w.tomsgames.com/us/2008/02/21/g...[/link]

    Rob Wright: You released The Orange Box for both the PC and the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. Were you happy with the business the console versions did, and how did it compare to the game's PC sales?

    Doug Lombari: We were very happy with both the Xbox 360 and PS3 sales. I think the Xbox 360 version did just over a million, while the PS3 [released later in December] version did a few hundred thousand copies. So I think when all is said and done, The Orange Box will have sold about 1.5 million copies on the console, which is great. But the game's PC sales were much stronger.

    Rob Wright: How much stronger, exactly?

    Doug Lombari: I'd say significantly stronger, at least a two-digit percentage increase over the console sales. And that includes Steam sales, retail sales, and now individual sales of Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2. So when you take the PC numbers for The Orange Box a la carte, they're significantly higher.

  • rashes #39 4 years ago

    @skillian

    You are the winner of this comment thread....
    Edited by 1 at 22/02/08 @ 12:43

  • Katsumoto #40 4 years ago

    "Source may be a great engine on PC's but on BOTH 360 and PS3 it's way behind it's peers. " ?!??!

  • Katsumoto #41 4 years ago

    Sure, but why is that okay for pcs and not for the consoles? The CoD engine, the UE3 engine etc exist on pc as well, not to mention the Crytek one.

  • Katsumoto #42 4 years ago

    Oh I see, gotcha. Sorry, just me being thick ;)

  • DigDugDo #43 4 years ago

    360 wins again :)

  • mooseman721 #44 4 years ago

    Not the end of the world, i'll just buy it on PC, PS3 would have been better, but PC will be fine. I think they might be singing a different tune a year down the line mind you. And anyway, if LFD sells by the shedload, the call from EA will come, you can be sure of that.

  • Nallen #45 4 years ago

    The PS3 is an absurd bit of design, there is no getting away from that. But then so is all Sony design. When I was there there was an internal email asking for ideas from every member of staff in the company. I thought that was a wonderful idea, and it is, but I didn't reply because it stipulated ideas should be in keeping with the company ethos of developing unique technologies or some such, and my ideas centred around dropping all the proprietary BS and focussing on making excellent products that made peoples lives easier without requiring them to purchase every item they own again, but this time the Sony version.

    Same goes for the PS3 design. Lets face it if they had the same launch delay and had kept the same price point they could have used bog standard architecture like the 360 did and it would be better by virtue of the relentless pace of PC hardware. Then every game would have been cross platform and the PS3 would have been better at all of them just like my C2D is better than my brothers Athlon. Really, when you think about it that would have been a nigh on perfect solution, you get a game that runs the same on all three platforms (PC, Xbox and PS3) and make the 'HD' version for PC and PS3 and then where you need to par down to run on the 360 hardware/fit on a DVD instead of Blu-Ray.

  • Golgo #46 4 years ago

    Valve really are geniuses: with Steam, they became the only company that managed to persuade people willingly to download a virus/spyware into their computers.

  • skillian #47 4 years ago

    ^hyperbole ftw.

  • zedzee #48 4 years ago

    Well you heard the man. They now have an X360 team that work 'side by side' with the PC guys. So anything written on the PC (their strong point) is then ported to X360, it seems.

    Crack some piece of code/draw some graphics, save it in a file, put it on a stick/e-mail it to the X360 guy and he'll fit the X360 specific routines around it and hey presto...you have an X360 port!

  • Darren #49 4 years ago

    @Golgo - Not willingly though as I bought Half-Life 2 on disc only to find out I had to install it (as expected), download Steam and then wait while it downloaded and updated the game files, which seemed to take an age back. Not only that but I discovered I had to log into Steam every time I played the game despite it only being offline. I can't say I was too impressed with it at the time but it's matured a bit since then and being able to download stuff like Dark Messiah of Might & Magic for £12 in just a couple of hours isn't so bad. I'm still not a big fan of downloading games though and I'd never pay more than £15 for something that way as I prefer my stuff on disc in a proper box.

  • Cylinder #50 4 years ago

    @Darren - Steam has never required you to log in to play a game (with the exception of the initial activation/update when you install it). This is pure myth! Offline mode is there for a reason.

  • Darren #51 4 years ago

    @ farticusmaximus - "Let's be honest, Source may be a great engine on PC's but on BOTH 360 and PS3 it's way behind it's peers."

    I have to agree with that statement. The Orange Box was a great collection of games but graphically they were all dated, especially the Half-Life 2 ones. Team Fortress 2 got away with it because it was cartoony but the others didn't fare so well and adding HDR lighting doesn't disguise the engine's age IMO. I thought Half-Life 2 looked dated when I played it on the PC in 2004, in fact, because while the faces and animation impressed, everything else was far less so with blurry flat textures and weak shadows, even with the visual settings on maximum. The Doom 3 engine and even the Unreal Engine 2 totally outclassed the Source engine in every way IMO.

  • Darren #52 4 years ago

    @Cylinder - Sorry but I'm certain you're wrong as I distinctly remember being annoyed because my ISP was down and I couldn't play Half-Life 2 offline as it kept trying to log me into Steam. If I cancelled it, it quit back to the desktop. This is AFTER I'd installed the game by the way. I believe it may have been fixed in one of the numerous updates quite early on, following complaints so perhaps you only played the game from then whereas I bought Half-Life 2 at launch?

  • Cylinder #53 4 years ago

    @Darren - I too bought Half-Life 2 at launch, activated and updated it the one time with my lowly dial up, and played it purely in offline mode for a good year after that. It sounds like you hadn't blocked Steam with your firewall, or disconnected entirely from the net. Had you done so, offline mode would have been a mere mouse click away. ‘Tis the truth!

  • skillian #54 4 years ago

    You could always play Half-Life 2 offline, but it wasn't very obvious how. You had to tick a check box in keyboard options or something strange I think.

  • krokomkiller #55 4 years ago

    Good point Nallen!

  • Darren #56 4 years ago

    @Cylinder - Ah well in that case I stand (or rather sit) well and truly corrected! I just remember being annoyed by it in the early days of my having broadband (Karoo) which was prone to frequent disconnections and such like.

  • deaner #57 4 years ago

    "Valve in yet another 'too lazy to develop for non-DX platforms' shocker!!1"

    Stroll on!

  • Ryze #58 4 years ago

    @oreillymj

    You talk absolute bollocks. Have you seen how many people play games on the PC recently?

    They don't all go to HMV and buy games - but tons do, the others use steam, the others use gametap, the others use ad supported websites, the others pay a sub to Blizzard, the others... you must by now catch my drift.

    It's massive and expanding - and if there's anywhere where download only full games are going to become the standard first - it's likely to be the PC, as so many are already connected to the worlds fastest internet connections.

    We just need better operating systems, connection speeds and interfaces.

    I can't wait until someone releases a Wi-fi set-top box that allows you to play your Steam / Gametap type games on the living room TV with Wireless pads. and a remote control.

    It's begging to be implemented, but fuck the phantom - this thing should be relatively cheap, but let you play your PC games.

  • Katsumoto #59 4 years ago

    And yet they still managed to sell over a million within 3 months. Can't be that bad eh!

  • Ryze #60 4 years ago

    Massive audience - as the PC is often already in the home when the game in question is brought to the gamer's attention.

  • Trikk #61 4 years ago

    Xbox 360 and PS3 will be dead gaming platforms centuries before PC gaming dies.

    Get over yourselves, consoles are shit for all intents and purposes. It's the newbie gateway to gaming. Anything a console will do, a PC does better. FPS games are better on PC. RTS games are better on PC. RPGs are better on PC. You can use keyboard, mouse, gamepad, joystick, wheel, etc for any game you'd like. Play on your monitor, your TV or a god damn projector if you like. You can modify your game any way you'd like. 10 years after a game is released, there will still be PC gamers playing it online.

    Let's see how many people there are playing Halo 2 or Resistance: Fall of Man online in 2014 and 2016, if MS and Sony will allow people to play those games online then. The only reason there's even any competition from consoles is Sony and Microsoft siphoning funds from their successful non-gaming divisions to subsidize hardware and push companies to make exclusives for them.

    Nintendo is the obvious exception. They already figured out that if you're going to create your own gaming system to have full control over, why copy a PC? Whine whine software attach ratio whine whine. Yeah of course people will buy more games for the other consoles than Wii or PC (I'm not sure if software sales for PC are lower though) when the games are 5-10 hour debacles instead of timeless classics. The only thing that means is the Xbox and Playstation nerds will have less money to get fat and party with.

  • Calgon #62 4 years ago

    /Sonybot mentality piss take

    "Signs Sony have lost, people jumping ship soon, PS3 teh flop now"

  • miiiguel #63 4 years ago

    Trikk, you need MS to play those PC games. And I didn't get it... console users are "newbies" or "nerds" ?
    Edited by 1 at 25/02/08 @ 16:17