However Left 4 Dead ”did better on the consoles” than PC so Valve ”don’t try to guess” because it’s not really worth it. Have ”higher priority” issues to ponder.
Gabe Newell responded to an interview question about PC and console sales figures, saying,”we can never predict; I mean we just try to build good games and then we tend to be surprised.” Valve rarely release sales figures for Steam.
However the studio executive did say ”Portal 2 did better on the PC than it did on the consoles; Left 4 Dead did better on the consoles than it did on the PC.”
”So you know we don’t try to guess,” he continued, ”because we’re not sure what value there is to guessing. We’ve never had a situation where we said, “We really, really want to build something that is more popular for the console guys.”
”Because usually we have a bunch of other higher priority problems we want to solve. So we’re glad that people want to play our games wherever they want to play.”
Newell has been talking about getting Microsoft to open up to Steamworks like Sony has with the PlayStation Network, and that it could bridge gamers to play together. Portal 2 was welcomed with big, wide open arms by critics and fans of the quirky series.