Gabe Newell calls PS3 'waste of everybody's time'

by Andrew Yoon { Oct 11th 2007 at 10:30AM }

Gabe Newell really hates the PS3. In a recent interview with Next-Gen, he blasted Sony's system due to its frustrating architecture, calling the system "a waste of everybody's time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There's nothing there that you're going to apply to anything else. You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they've created."

Because of his distaste for PS3, the critically acclaimed Orange Box is not being ported to PS3 by Valve. Rather, EA is handling the port and he's confident that "they'll make the PS3 version a good product; EA got the job done in putting a lot of people with PS3 experience on the project." He does note that "it's harder to get it to the same standard as the 360 and PC versions."

Hopefully, EA's treatment of The Orange Box will be better than the sloppy PS3 version of Madden, which was slammed by the gaming media for its sluggish framerate on PS3.

[Via CVG]

Tags: ea, gabe-newell, orange-box, valve

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

rawd @ Oct 11th 2007 10:37AM

I didn't know who Gabe Newell was until I wiki'd. Now it makes sense... and he's not really one who should talk about something being bloated.

A "Microsoft millionaire" after working 13 years for the company, Newell founded Valve in 1996 with Mike Harrington, another former Microsoft employee. He and Harrington used their money to fund Valve through the development of Half-Life.

During production on Half-Life 2, he spent several months focusing on the Steam project.

shase @ Oct 11th 2007 10:36AM

I guess he is a guy who wants to stand still and not be challenged by new tech? Does anyone gives a &*^% what he says nowadays? So if i start programming for 360 can i say the samething since i never programmed before - it is new and challenging to me. Half life is like the only thing good coming out of valve and it really isnt THAT good..

VorteX @ Oct 11th 2007 10:44AM

He´s just want attention.

Gabe Newell: DirectX 10 for Vista was a mistake http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/94869
Gabe Newell Explains Why Valve Hates The mac http://kotaku.com/gaming/player-hater/gabe-newell-explains-why-valve-hates-the-mac-304730.php Newell: Half-Life 2 on Xbox Was a Disappointment biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=12243
Gabe Newell: Xbox 360 Makes My Life Worse news.teamxbox.com/xbox/9103/Gabe-Newell-Xbox-360-Makes-My-Life-Worse/
Valve’s head honcho and former Microsoft employee isn’t happy

Bored @ Oct 11th 2007 10:45AM

This guy is the Michael Moore of videogames.

Doing everything he can to sound controversial.

slade @ Oct 14th 2007 8:24PM

i wished ea games will make need for speed pro street awesome on ps3 better then skate cause on teh 360 skate is awesome lookin

me-inside @ Oct 11th 2007 10:47AM

Good God, a millionaire who can't keep a clean shirt....just look at it!!!!!!!!!

Brian Spence @ Oct 11th 2007 10:47AM

He sounds like a deck

Joe H @ Oct 11th 2007 10:50AM

read: fat, lazy.

insights: greasy. picture says something related to dave strattling male genetalia. reminds me of old manager who got fired for being (fat, lazy, greasy.)

homosexuality: not a problem. differences, etc. Newell: a problem. Large, dumb erection.

me > dave. and I can't help but notice much more intricate games like oblivion having been succesfully ported and fully developed (fat, lazy, greasy.)

Brian Spence @ Oct 11th 2007 10:49AM

Oh yeah, and this is the guy who won't port HL to Macs unless Apple makes changes that they aren't willing to make. He never clarified on that statement, so Apple chimed in saying that Gabe and Valve wanted $1 million to port it to the Mac. Apple told him to shove it.

I love Half-Life, but this guy's an ass.

upz @ Oct 11th 2007 10:51AM

Newell's a pretty big name, but it'd be a whole lot easier to take his comments seriously if we hadn't already seen things on the PS3 that look better than the Orange Box. Sure, there's much more going on behind the scenes than graphics, but it's definitely the big guy in terms of processing bottlenecks. The fact that he can't get a three year old PC game running on a one year old machine seems more of a testament to his narrowmindedness and unwillingness to change an actual weakness in the hardware.

Twelve @ Oct 11th 2007 10:55AM

Newell has had and continues to have investments in Microsoft, is used to getting what he wants, and Sony quite frankly pisses him off.

Somebody already mentioned Michael Moore...yeah, it's hard to see the credibility in their words because he's so ugly. I know, I sound shallow. But dang...some people shouldn't get in front of a camera if they're going to make such attention-getting comments.---12

upz @ Oct 11th 2007 10:57AM

*than an actual weakness in the hardware.

Chameleon @ Oct 11th 2007 11:02AM

"He sounds like a deck"
Brian Spence

I just woke up and for some reason I read that as: 'He looks like a deck'.

I damn near pissed myself.

ryano @ Oct 11th 2007 11:13AM

wow, nobody's mentioned where he should shove that big screw o his. heheh.

didn't know this tubbo was a Sony hater. sucks that Valve has no hand in getting it onto the PS3 and EA of all companies has to pick up the slack. sounds kinda shady!

glad i'm getting the 360 version tomorrow. Reviews thus far have been pretty stellar.

James @ Oct 11th 2007 11:09AM

You know, someone stole the Half Life 2 Source Code originally before the game was published due to some random flaw in Microsoft Outlook. How does this guy stand by them? They must pay him lots of money.

Delive @ Oct 11th 2007 5:55PM

Either way, EA is porting this game to the PS3. I was so looking forward to playing this on the PS3, but it's doomed to the EA Ports epidemic.

Guess I'll have to pass.

-viper- @ Oct 11th 2007 11:17AM

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/9103/Gabe-Newell-Xbox-360-Makes-My-Life-Worse/

:\

By the way, EA UK are handling Half-Life 2. They have GOOD DEVELOPERS. (Criterion Games, Burnout devs).

Strike Man @ Oct 11th 2007 11:18AM

"How does this guy stand by them? They must pay him lots of money."

He speaks his mind, whether one agrees with him or not. He ripped Microsoft on their stupid decision to release the Core version of the 360, as you can see in the link VorteX posted above.

*Sigh*

Although I guess I should just assume that 80% of the comments here will simply be along the lines of "hrk hrk hez fat lololzol!" and forget having a debate of ideas and opinions.

Frank @ Oct 11th 2007 11:21AM

Pretty sad you have to resort to attacking his weight because he said something bad about our system :\

Regardless of his past history with microsoft, I really don't think he's speaking out against PS3 because he used to work for them. Sounds like he's desperately trying to make his games work on the PS3, but is getting extremely frustrated with the architecture.

You can't deny he's made amazing games, he's one of the few developers who can speak out like this and shouldn't really be argued with.

Trev @ Oct 11th 2007 11:32AM

@18 Frank
The reason for that is he's a millionaire with a dirty shirt and greasy hair. If you look at the picture on Joystiq, he can barely put his arm down at his sides. It looks like he has to lean to reach into his pockets.

He's the video game version of the Simpson's comicbook guy who's just bashing everything that doesn't suit him personally. Apple wouldn't give him a million dollars, so they're not developer friendly and have a bad platform. He might have to learn something new to work with DX10, so it was a mistake. The Cell isn't an x86, so it's pointless to work with.

To top it off, he's not even working on the PS3 version. He just wants to badmouth something and get attention. It's not a lack of understanding of new hardware that delayed the PS3 orange box

ryano @ Oct 11th 2007 11:33AM

hahaha @16

so it comes out that he hated working without a Hard drive. well now we know that he's a guy who gets frustrated with getting his game out.

but we all know how the 360 version has fared without a hard drive:http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox360/halflife2theorangebox

ShaggyB @ Oct 11th 2007 11:37AM

nice, fat jokes are the best you can throw at the guy.Im sure hes never heard that before.

I like the articles hint that ps3 may get a framerate drop due to EAs "Ps3 skillz".

Good luck, 1st its delayed now its got EA at the helm getting it to you.

Popfrogs @ Oct 11th 2007 12:06PM

If it weren't for the new Team Fortress, the Orange Box wouldn't even be on the radar for me. I played and beat HL2 a few years ago on the PC. The HL multiplayer has always been terrible and Team Fortress has always been great.

It honestly doesn't surprise me that Newell bashes anything. He's only done ONE game since the company was founded. Half Life. If it weren't for Counter Strike people would have quit playing it 7 years ago. So...in the time span his company has been alive, nearly 10 years now, they have done one game and taken more than 5 years to code the follow up. Not only that but they've only done it on the x86 platform for PCs.

When you look at Big Gabe and Valve from this perspective, you learn what a narrow-minded noob he and his company really is. He's allergic to change (of platforms, of operating systems, of clean shirts) and that spills over onto his dev team. When the CEO is a stubborn ass, you end up with a mule team.

Now you mention that EA is handling the PS3 port, and all hope is lost. Please Sony, for the love of god and all that is good, send some of your PS3 engineers over there and teach them how to use the SPEs and the Cell.

RankHypocrisy @ Oct 11th 2007 12:08PM

He is basically upset that the vastly different PS3 architecture makes porting his existing games difficult. He wants to be able to produce a game once, and then sell it on multiple platforms with minor changes. The Cell makes this difficult.

That doesn't mean that the Cell or the PS3 are bad pieces of hardware, only that they are not conducive to his desired business model.

PS - he's fat.

SlavedHeart @ Oct 11th 2007 12:15PM

I don't care what anyone else says, I'm actually a little freaking heart broken. I've supported and toasted the good fortune of Valve since time before memory, and here is the head of the company I so vaulted basically pissing down on my head. So I'd rather play games on my TV, and leave my aging PC for work these days, especially since my TV is for the first time in years WAY bigger than my monitor, that's enough for you to decry my choice of console as "a waste of time?". Frig dude, upgrading my PC strictly to play some of the modern games is more expensive than just buying a PS3 and being able to invest my upgrade money into games...

Look here, jog on Gabe, I'm no longer a part of the Valve-Army, and anyone I recruited is out with me (that's my dog, and my dead bird, stoney). Valve had such great potential, especially with DLC becoming the buzzword of the next console generation, and he's obstinately pissing it away by giving the keys to the kingdom to EA (like everyone else does). Frig Gabe, why? Stop being a little girl and man up, everyone's had to do it for each console generation, just because Valve has had such success on PC, you think your immune? Grow a pair and Do HL3 right, on ALL platforms, because sure as the the sun is gonna shine, I ain't gonna buy the Orange Box anymore....

88mr88 @ Oct 11th 2007 12:19PM

http://mcchicken.free.fr/nofrag/GabeNewell_LeMotMagique.gif

Kellian @ Oct 11th 2007 12:16PM

Hey, at least if Gabe Newell can call the PS3 a "waste of time" we can call him "holy FAT."

AmericanNinja @ Oct 11th 2007 12:30PM

I was going to buy The Orange Box for my PS3 and my PC but not anymore.

SelfCon @ Oct 11th 2007 12:34PM

If Criterion can LEAD DEVELOP a game like Burnout on the PS3 that runs at 60fps and looks AMAZING...Valve should be able to port a 3 year old game. Enough Said.

sain @ Oct 11th 2007 12:42PM

"Regardless of his past history with microsoft, I really don't think he's speaking out against PS3 because he used to work for them. Sounds like he's desperately trying to make his games work on the PS3, but is getting extremely frustrated with the architecture.

You can't deny he's made amazing games, he's one of the few developers who can speak out like this and shouldn't really be argued with."

I guess all the other developers that have made games for PS3 are doing some magic because their games work!

Sain @ Oct 11th 2007 12:44PM

"30. Gotta love the intelligent responses from the sony crew, making fat jokes or microsoft paid him off to say this, way to go guys! This guy is a BIG name in the industry and his opinion means alot, get over it."

Ah, so you're from the Microsoft crew....

Kellian @ Oct 11th 2007 12:50PM

@30 - If his opinion is so important, and he's such a big name, don't you think he could afford a clean shirt? Or at least some laundry detergent? The point is if he wants to be critical AND disparaging at the same time, all the while acting as a figurehead for Valve, he should look at little less like a Slob. Fact of the matter is, appearances matter.

Twelve @ Oct 11th 2007 12:59PM

Hey, I'm not saying anything about him being fat. I mean, that's wrong. Some people are born with the inability to exercise. I guess.

I'm talking about him being UGLY. Skinny people are ugly people. Such people should not talk so much, because they end up being on camera with ugly shirts.---12

rawd @ Oct 11th 2007 1:16PM

I can read his expression. He's estimating the time it would take to deep fry a PS3.

clavian @ Oct 11th 2007 1:21PM

Gabe should embrace new technology, and see if maybe he can find a way to create a game that doesn't require a 15 sec "loading" for every 2 minutes of gameplay. I like the HL series, but the damn loading sessions are unbearable, especially since no other game does it.

NATO_Duke @ Oct 11th 2007 1:21PM

Now suddenly Valve is the enemy to the SDF and fanboys - please. Call him fat or talk about a dirty shirt, but don't even try this crap about Valve being lame, them only making Halflife (when they made the follow-up games), and other "extortion" comments about Apple. They are a corporation trying to make money, and they have done so with a few GOTY's under their belt.

The Halflife series is a cornerstone series for fps fans, which affords him the right to talk. Maybe you should listen to a message from someone with experience rather than crying for his hanging.

Chris @ Oct 11th 2007 1:26PM

"This guy is the Michael Moore of videogames."

Amen!

BTW, does this make anyone NOT want to buy the game. I really wanted this game and if I'm not playing anything at the time, I will still get it, however, if there are other games out that I want, I will pick those up over this. After all, why should we support him if he isn't going to support us (the PS3)?

Re: PS3 being hard to develop for. Why are there so many other developers who can make games for the PS3 while this waste of sperm can't? Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Ninja Theory, 2K, etc. all made or are making successful games for the PS3. This tells me that he is either lazy (which by looking at his weight is a good indicator), stupid (he's cracked just about everyone and everything), or both. I'll go with both.

Fat ass.

FrankTheCrank @ Oct 11th 2007 1:30PM

How come Codemasters, Incognito have no problems? And those guys turn out some great stuff?

He's looking at it from a business standpoint. He's trying to squeeze every nickel out of his investment dollar.

This is what all developers love to do...they would rather port their PC stuff straight to the 360, cause it's easy. There's no work. The 360 is Windows lite.

It's unfortunate.

John @ Oct 11th 2007 1:37PM

Maybe he should open up the PS3 dev kits they've been sending around...

Brian Spence @ Oct 11th 2007 3:34PM

wow, I'm seeing almost as many M$ fanboys here as there are PS3 fans. Um, nobody here has said anything about the guy not being ahead of his time for making the excellent Half-Life. I'll put that game over Halo 3 any day of the week. However, you can't say that they're perfect. Team Fortress 2 has only been in development forever, where they've had to ENTIRELY SCRAP the game several times over. If they're so brilliant, why do they have such a long development time and keep having so many problems on Microsoft's platform? They obviously can barely keep it together on that architecture, and Gabe can't get his FAT LAZY (yes, I said it) butt to get motivated to developing for all platforms. It's possible that Valve may be financially in trouble, because they can't get such a simple thing accomplished. They're trying to keep everyone's confidence in their company when they make an announcement that they can't handle what other companies can (and do it better, in the case of Heavenly Sword, Resistance, and others).

And Steam? Come on! Offering a system to download a game instead of buying it. How visionary! Big deal.

Aurvant @ Oct 11th 2007 1:49PM

I'm still trying to figure Gabe Newall out. Valve and Capcom seem to be the only developers that cant seem to get the whole development process down.

Both are large and well respected developer houses yet Gabe Newall states that the PS3 is just too hard to deal with and Capcom cancels Monster Hunter 3 so that it can be on the Wii citing development costs.

Yet! Smaller, less funded, and newer gaming development teams seem to be able to pull stuff out of their asses that spank the piss out of Orange Box or Monster Hunter.

I'm just confused on this whole thing I guess.

ruibing @ Oct 11th 2007 1:53PM

I wish Orange Box came out for my mac. I just don't get why he is so spiteful. Most CS programmers I know are a bit seclusive but otherwise pretty friendly and finds the idea of porting between languages a challenge and not a chore.

comtar @ Oct 11th 2007 1:57PM

Could be worse, he could be helping on Wii port of the game... to be honest it isn't unlikely. The Wii runs off an ATI graphics processor, I use to have a junkass machine with an ATI processor when Half-Life 2 first came out and it ran amazingly cause the game was ATI optimized... so if my old machine can run Half-Life 2 amazingly, I would think the Wii could...

I really don't trust EA with anything myself... They have single handedly ruined alot of titles. The EA machine is great when they help back up financially amazing developers. So when EA writes the paychecks, as long as the programming team is good... it usually works out. But when EA works on a project themselves, it hasn't been a really good thing for the PS3.

Some of the biggest problems with the PS3 comes from lazy developers, people who try to simply port things from the 360 or PC to the PS3. Take for example the Ghost Recon 2 team, they had a PS3 team, and a 360 team... working seperately. Because they had two different teams, both versions ran amazingly.

But most developers program under the 360 because of it being so close to PC language, and the PS3 is supposedly better hardware, so the logic being that if the 360 can handle it, the PS3 should. This is flawed thinking, that's like expecting PC games to run on Macintoshs perfectly. That's why games like Stranglehold are being completely reworked to run optimized on PS3 so they aren't just merely ports.

Slowly but surely developers are not just merely porting 360 games, they are learning two different teams are needed. I think Gabe Newell is simply just upset he can't split himself into two.

Tim Parsons @ Oct 11th 2007 1:58PM

This guys Gut is a "waste of food"

Chris @ Oct 11th 2007 2:00PM

@47

Other developers have done it or are doing it just fine. So why can't he do it? Lazy? Judging by his appearances, I'd say yes.

Really, is he too stupid to figure it out? I'm not kidding, I'm looking for an honest answer. EA is doing it so obviously they can figure it out, why can't he?

It comes down to one thing and one thing only. He's lazy. Just look at him.

chris.westermann @ Oct 11th 2007 2:03PM

Simply put, PS3 is next-gen gaming, Xbox360 is current gen gaming. PS3 pushes limits, Xbox360 doesn't. PS3 gaming will be light years ahead by the time people like Gabe figure out how to program for a living.

Icebear98 @ Oct 11th 2007 2:52PM

I think I understand why he would say something like this. He seems to be more interested in bringing out games than working the hardware, so not being able to just recompile HL2 for PS3/X360/PC must frustrate him. I just fail to see why the Cell CPU should get the blame. Surely if you want to have one source (no pun intended) across the 3 platforms, it's just a matter of hard work. The X360 is not the same as a PC either, and it sounds like that platform was getting flak earlier. His argumentation fails a bit when he starts to talk on why multi-core programming all of a sudden is ok, needed even. One wonders how much of the multi-core architecture Valve actually uses? This could explain his outburst at the Cell.
Anyway - soon we will have Orange Box on PS3, and hopefully Valve will support the HL2 base as they do on the PC, so games written for the HL2 engine will port easily to the HL2 PS3 engine. And the brain of this guy and his company has brought me many happy hours of gaming.

SlavedHeart @ Oct 11th 2007 2:46PM

Hey may be a genius and he may be a leader in the industry, and he may be a revoloutionary designer (all of which I agree with) but by ousting and ostracizing a significant percentage of the hardcore fans of video games (the so called "sony" crowd), he's long ago stopped being the most important thing of all...

A gamer... Isn't that what you are?

Stop attaching each other, and finding attacks in what others said you load (and stop calling people noobs), this is what makes the game public look like children. We need to agree or disagree, not go into the fat jokes, not critique each others ability, but give our point on the subject, and listen to each others point, and debate them... and if you can't do that, I'm gonna have my dad come over to your house and beat up your dad, how about that?