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</div>In an exclusive interview with CVG, Valve's Doug Lombardi answered some of the tough questions that many in the community have had on their mind. First and foremost he states that a new batch of downloadable content will be headed to the original Left 4 Dead.
Fans eager for more information on that DLC will have to wait until Summer. Secondly, Valve's PR man discusses a small bit about Left 4 Dead 2 and drops vague hints at how the first and second games will tie together. PS3 development, id Software's acquistion, and much more are all up for grabs.
It was also clear that the boycott group did absolutely nothing to alter Valve's plans. In order to read what Lombardi had to say about that group, you'll have to hit the jump! Otherwise, you can check out the full interview courtesy of CVG.<!--more-->
</div>In an exclusive interview with CVG, Valve's Doug Lombardi answered some of the tough questions that many in the community have had on their mind. First and foremost he states that a new batch of downloadable content will be headed to the original Left 4 Dead.
Fans eager for more information on that DLC will have to wait until Summer. Secondly, Valve's PR man discusses a small bit about Left 4 Dead 2 and drops vague hints at how the first and second games will tie together. PS3 development, id Software's acquistion, and much more are all up for grabs.
And of course you're still snubbing PS3 on the Left 4 Dead front. Surely this has to come down to your preference as a company now, rather than any sort of technical limitation?
Lombardi: I think I'd use a little bit of the same answers. We look at it as if we were customers of this product, how would we want to be treated and what sort of product would we want out of it?
We've run a couple of experiments over the years of PlayStation in general; we did Half-Life on PS2 with an outside company and then we did Orange Box PS3 with an outside company. We weren't able to deliver the same type of product on PS3 and PS2 for that matter that we were on the 360 and PC.
If you look at it as a matter of Valve doing it, Valve did the 360 and the PC version of the Orange Box and they both go 96 on Metacritic - The PS3 version was nowhere close to that. Left 4 Dead got a 89 or a 90 on 360 and PC. We're really, really proud of the fact that whatever platform you play the game on you're getting the same experience, you're getting the same Metacritic score. And with Left 4 Dead, you're getting the same DLC with the survival pack and some of the stuff that we have coming.
Until we have the ability to get a PS3 team together, until we find the people who want to come to Valve or who are at Valve who want to work on that, I don't really see us moving to that platform.
We've kind of learned a lesson in that again, if we were customers of that product on PlayStation, we'd feel like we sort of got the stepchild version of the product while the guys on the PC and the 360 got the sweet version of it.
Lombardi: I think I'd use a little bit of the same answers. We look at it as if we were customers of this product, how would we want to be treated and what sort of product would we want out of it?
We've run a couple of experiments over the years of PlayStation in general; we did Half-Life on PS2 with an outside company and then we did Orange Box PS3 with an outside company. We weren't able to deliver the same type of product on PS3 and PS2 for that matter that we were on the 360 and PC.
If you look at it as a matter of Valve doing it, Valve did the 360 and the PC version of the Orange Box and they both go 96 on Metacritic - The PS3 version was nowhere close to that. Left 4 Dead got a 89 or a 90 on 360 and PC. We're really, really proud of the fact that whatever platform you play the game on you're getting the same experience, you're getting the same Metacritic score. And with Left 4 Dead, you're getting the same DLC with the survival pack and some of the stuff that we have coming.
Until we have the ability to get a PS3 team together, until we find the people who want to come to Valve or who are at Valve who want to work on that, I don't really see us moving to that platform.
We've kind of learned a lesson in that again, if we were customers of that product on PlayStation, we'd feel like we sort of got the stepchild version of the product while the guys on the PC and the 360 got the sweet version of it.
It was also clear that the boycott group did absolutely nothing to alter Valve's plans. In order to read what Lombardi had to say about that group, you'll have to hit the jump! Otherwise, you can check out the full interview courtesy of CVG.<!--more-->
The boycott. Did they change your plans for L4D 1 DLC at all?
Lombardi: It really didn't change our plans at all. As I mentioned we had plans to keep releasing stuff. We put the Survival Pack out for free which I thought was pretty cool on 360 as well as PC - it's sort of uncommon to be able to get new stuff out that way.
We're already released the authoring tools and the matchmaking to get that content out to people, because the problem with mods and stuff like that is people make great stuff but then it doesn't really get propagated to the whole community properly.
So we're doing that. And then there's more new content that we're working on that we'll be announcing as I mentioned at the end of the summer.
I think there was just some confusion. When you go to E3 and make a big splash on a new product you're trying to get the retailer's attention and the press attention.
It's not really the venue for announcing DLC and whatnot. I think folks took our announcement as a sign that we were dropping Left 4 Dead 1 and that's just not the case.
Lombardi: It really didn't change our plans at all. As I mentioned we had plans to keep releasing stuff. We put the Survival Pack out for free which I thought was pretty cool on 360 as well as PC - it's sort of uncommon to be able to get new stuff out that way.
We're already released the authoring tools and the matchmaking to get that content out to people, because the problem with mods and stuff like that is people make great stuff but then it doesn't really get propagated to the whole community properly.
So we're doing that. And then there's more new content that we're working on that we'll be announcing as I mentioned at the end of the summer.
I think there was just some confusion. When you go to E3 and make a big splash on a new product you're trying to get the retailer's attention and the press attention.
It's not really the venue for announcing DLC and whatnot. I think folks took our announcement as a sign that we were dropping Left 4 Dead 1 and that's just not the case.