Will there be Steam on PS3?

Question

Is Steam going to be available on PS3? If so, does that mean that if I have purchased a game through Steam on my PC, and a PS3 version of that game exists, will I automatically be able to play it on my PS3 as well?

Answer 1

According to the Valve Developer Erik Johnson during an interview on E3 2010 , cross-platform co-op is "planned". That is, PC/Mac users will be able to play Portal 2 with PS3 users. Nothing on support of further games, though.

UPDATE: More blurb from the Valve's PR guy Lombardi.

Answer 2

We don't know too much yet about exactly what Steam features will be available, but there were some details released on January 18 regarding Portal 2.

From Develop:

Valve has revealed that its hotly-anticipated upcoming title Portal 2 will be released with a cross-platform capability allowing gamers to use multiplayer across the PS3, PC and Mac platforms.

Players on all three platforms will also have the ability to chat online and PS3 owners will be able to upload their saved games to a cloud-based storage system.

The PS3 version of the game will also include a Steam code to allow buyers to download and install the game on PC.

“We made a promise to gamers at E3 that Portal 2 for PS3 would be the best console version of the product,” said Valve president and co-founder Gabe Newell.

“Working with Sony we have identified a set of features we believe are very compelling to gamers. We hope to expand upon the foundation being laid in Portal 2 with more Steam features and functionality in DLC and future content releases.”

Portal 2 project lead Josh Weier added: “PS3 gamers will be able to simply drop the Blu-ray disc into the PS3 and link to their Steam account from inside the game.

"All their Steam friends on PC and Mac will be visible and accessible for chat and game invites.”

It will depend on whether particular games support everything of course, but this tells us that it is at least possible to do:

• Cross-platform multiplayer
• Shared saved games between platforms
• Purchase the game once, available to play on all three platforms
• Friend list and chat/invite available on all platforms

So yes, it looks like a large part of what makes up "Steam" will be available on PS3.

Answer 3

It was confirmed at E3 that Steamworks support (Steam's digital distribution platform) will be implemented on the PS 3 as part of the release of Portal 2 on PS3.

Answer 4

As the other answers state, Portal 2 will use Steamworks. It will be available on the PS3, and PS3 players will be able to play multi-player with users on PC/Mac. It has also been stated that if you purchase the PS3 version of a Steamworks game, you will be able to download the PC version.

Any games that currently exist both on PC Steam and on PS3 are NOT using Steamworks on PS3, and thus will not get the same capabilities that Portal 2 has. Future games may be created with Steamworks to have these capabilities.

Nothing has said whether or not you would be able to purchase the PC version of Portal 2 and then download the PS3 version (this applies to any other game as well), but it seems unlikely. Due to the fact that downloading to your PS3 would require the game to run entirely from the hard drive, this would likely be impossible except for small games such as the ones you can download from the Playstation Network.

Answer 5

The two platforms are radically different; so while you might, might, be able to play things a-la SteamPlay (Win/Mac), only games rebuilt for PS3 would possibly work. The vast majority of games, notably those that aren't Valve's or very basic, would probably never be ported.

That is all speculation though.