Back at E3, Valve’s Gabe Newell made a surprise appearance in the Sony conference to announce that Portal 2 would be hitting the PS3 with Steamworks support. The big news today is that Portal 2 on the PS3 will allow users to link their PSN accounts to their Steam IDs, unlocking cross-platform play/chat as well as the Steam Play version for PC/Mac. In this household, at least, this dramatically changes the status quo.

Since the start of this console cycle, I’ve used the 360 as my platform of choice for multi-platform titles while buying Valve titles off Steam and reserving the PS3 and Wii for platform exclusives. Now, I can say with certainty that Portal 2 will be my first multi-platform purchase for the PS3, and the PS3 version will likely become my default platform for Valve games if this is the benchmark for future titles.
While I’m a huge fan of Valve and Steam and I consider this a massive victory for the multi-platform gamer, another part of me is still left feeling a little uneasy. As great as Steam is, there’s one demographic that I believe finds it a little bit lacking in comparison to platforms like Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network – gamers with families.
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