Valve, the company behind the massive PC games catalog Steam, has no plans to move their work over to consoles any time soon. Valve have been behind some hugely successful titles of their own including the Counter Strike and Left 4 Dead franchises. According to Valve boss Gabe Newell, these will remain in the realm of the PC for a length of time.
In a recent interview with EuroGamer, Newell spoke about the trouble his company has when working with other software companies. He cites the Steam app for iOS as a key example of the problem his team faces when trying to branch away from their comfort zone of the PC.
When Valve first released the app onto iOS he says that within the first day of it hitting the App Store, Valve received a ton of feedback which they quickly worked upon to create a patch for the software. According to Newell, “We weren’t able to get that update out for six months.” He was given no reason as to why Apple refused to ship the update, and when they finally did, they didn’t even tell them why it took such a length of time.
Newell says working in the environment of relying on other software providers leaves Valve in a position of “complete uncertainty about doing updates… Like we don’t know how to operate.”
When asked if the prospect of working in the console environment is becoming a more attractive proposition, he simply says, “We love the PC right now. A lot.”
What this tells us about Valve and the future of their work is quite clear. We will not be seeing their titles making the cross over to the Xbox or PlayStation in the near future. The hugely influential and successful business has enough work to do on their preferred platform for the time being.