When Gabe Newell announced at Sony’s E3 press conference that Portal 2 would be bringing Steam over to the PS3, gamers familiar with the service knew something special was going to happen. We just didn’t know which features were being carried over. Today, Valve released a press release detailing exactly which ones: cross-platform multiplayer among PS3, PC, and Mac users; cross-platform chat and game invites; PS3 saves stored on the Steam cloud server; and linking your PSN and Steam accounts will allow you to play your copy on PC and Mac as well, via Steam Play.
This is a major step forward for cross-platform gaming, the first notable development since Epic Games released Unreal Tournament III on the PS3 and PC with cross-platform multiplayer back in 2007. Personally, I want to see a lot of games in the Steam store available for purchase on PS3. If they allow keyboard & mouse support, I’d be all over playing Counter-Strike source in surround sound on my HDTV.
