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[bender]

After witnessing the interactions on PSVR reddit I have concluded that they are begging for Alyx on PSVR2 is because of Alyx is in a league of its own and less of because it is a Half-Life game. And perhaps these PSVR2 players know it is highly unrealistic to expect Sony themselves to make something on par with Alyx for PSVR2.

I'm still not sure why Sony didn't back a truck of cash up to Valve to make Alyx happen for PSVR2. I'll be there day one if that happens.

 

[CamHostage]

...Sorry, I realized after posting this that talking about HL on or not on other platforms might derail the thread. I still took too long typing to burn my reply, but ignore this smallened wall of text if the idea doesn't interest you.

It's just that Valve does weird stuff with its library every once in a blue moon, like giving Half-Life 1 away for free...

You’re overthinking it. It’s more like Valve not caring enough about consoles to get their hands dirty and port them over, and not because they want those exclusivity status. HL games regularly goes on sales for next to nothing, and can easily run on any cheap modern laptops that cost the same as a PS Portal. if console players want to play them they can easily do so by now.

I'm not overthinking it, I'm stating mostly the exact reasons you are: they don't need pennies when they are making billions off of Steam percentage fees (it's a little silly that they bother to put their own 20+ year old games up for even "next to nothing" when their profit mainly comes from other developers' money, but that's besides the point and also is true of every other platform provider,) they don't need to waste resources on a console port of old games or even current games when they have their own projects to support (like making prototypes of future Half-Life projects which will never see the light of day...), and they have partners with vested purposes which might make it counterproductive to explore alternate markets even if they wanted to.

The reasons for them to do non-PC releases of library games, however, is the same as Portal Companion Collection: it'd be easy, it would be a job which would generate some money, and it would be a nice moment for whichever of these franchises they chose to pull out of the vault. (Valve doesn't even need to do the ports, there are lots of Source-familiar developers who would be happy for the contract these days.) They probably won't bother, but weirdly, every once in a great while, they do or let somebody do it.

(I'm not expecting to ever again see a Valve product on an Xbox or PlayStation, but I wasn't really expecting a Switch release last year either. Maybe something unexpected will happen for HL2's 20th anniversary next year? Probably not? HL1's anniversary is in 3 days...)

The only reason Portal Collection for Switch happened is because of Nvidia, who is a strong partner of both Valve and Nintendo... All of these to promote their own RTX GPUs on PC and the Tegra chip in Switch, while strengthening the working relationship with Valve & Nintendo.

OK, now you're overthinking it. Valve didn't make Portal Collection to "promote" its almost decade-old Tegra chip. (NVIDIA as it is has not been generating any Tegra business in a long time outside of Nintendo and some car and robot projects, and although the T239 is promising comeback as a follow-up to the Switch's X1 if they can slim it down, there hasn't been a line of other customers eager to put Tegras in their hardware for years.) And they didn't make the Collection because Nintendo has a strong partnership with NVIDIA. (NVIDIA and its developer studio wouldn't be getting any laurels or insight from Nintendo by porting 10-year-old games to a mobile handheld either.)

Everybody involved has potentially better things to do with it's time... but also, why not Portal?

BTW, NVIDIA's strong partnership with Valve didn't get any Tegra chips into Steam Deck; those are AMD chips powering that portable... maybe Valve should strengthen its AMD partnership by getting somebody to make special versions of old games for that device* too?
(*Actually, most everything from Valve is certified at least "Playable" on Deck, so that would be mostly silly, although even those could use some patches to play better on a Deck screen/controller, plus maybe some gyro and graphic sweetening for fun on the portable.)

Nvidia’s in house Lightspeed Studios, not Valve, is the one responsible for all of the modernization works for Valve classic games like the RTX remasters for Portal and Half Life, Valve and Nintendo games on Nvidia Shield and Portal Collection for Switch.

One of the weirdest things about Portal CC existing is that the developers put work into it.

If NVIDIA wanted to use old Valve games to make Nintendo slightly happier, they could have just taken their existent Portal 1 and Half-Life 2 ports from NVIDIA Shield and put those on a card. (Portal 1 in Portal CC is mostly the Shield Android port from 2014, and shreds of the HL2 Android are left in the build of Portal CC Switch.) Instead, NVIDIA Lightspeed made a fresh Portal 2 port, complete with online support.

(It's possible that the Portal 2 port dates back to the Shield days and just never came out, but then, why bother translating online over to Switch when it's just one more server to maintain for a port you're pulling out of mothballs? Why code ad-hoc multiplayer link? Switch fans would probably have settled happily for split-screen co-op. Or, if you're going to go to the effort and are trying to make partners happy, why not add back in cross-play, since PS3-to-PC used to play together?)

Again, NVIDIA Lightspeed has things it could be doing besides porting a couple of Valve's many games to Nintendo hardware. Their RTX remastering projects have been press-worthy works (although now with RTX Remix allowing full AI-generated replacements of textures and models, NVIDIA is turning to even smaller and cheaper MOD groups; only four people are being used to oversee HL2 RTX Remix.) But for whatever reasons, this particular project lined up to make happen.

After witnessing the interactions on PSVR reddit I have concluded that they are begging for Alyx on PSVR2 is because of Alyx is in a league of its own and less of because it is a Half-Life game.

I agree that HL Alyx been a dumb, unsubstantiated rumor since day 1 of PSVR2 talk... it'd be cool if they did, it is the defining VR game so far, but holding your breath for it to happen feels about as fruitless as holding out for HL3.

 

[ArtHands]

The reasons for them to do non-PC releases of library games, however, is the same as Portal Companion Collection: it'd be easy, it would be a job which would generate some money, and it would be a nice moment for whichever of these franchises they chose to pull out of the vault. (Valve doesn't even need to do the ports, there are lots of Source-familiar developers who would be happy for the contract these days.) They probably won't bother, but weirdly, every once in a great while, they do or let somebody do it.

I don’t think you’re getting it; Valve is totally uninterested to put in any effort themselves to release their games for non-PC platforms regardless of how easy the job is. The only way it is happening is if their partner, Nvidia is the one doing it. if Nvidia wants to port to PS5 or mobile, it’s unlikely Valve will say no. But like I said, no reason Nvidia wants to do that in the first place. For that matter, I don’t think Valve even care to the extend of looking for other developers to port their games considering they have Nvidia.

OK, now you're overthinking it. Valve didn't make Portal Collection to "promote" its almost decade-old Tegra chip. (NVIDIA as it is has not been generating any Tegra business in a long time outside of Nintendo and some car and robot projects, and although the T239 is promising comeback as a follow-up to the Switch's X1 if they can slim it down, there hasn't been a line of other customers eager to put Tegras in their hardware for years.) And they didn't make the Collection because Nintendo has a strong partnership with NVIDIA. (NVIDIA and its developer studio wouldn't be getting any laurels or insight from Nintendo by porting 10-year-old games to a mobile handheld either.)

I am not saying Valve is promoting the Tegra chip. I am saying Nvidia is the one who is making the Portal ports to maintain and improve the current partnership (of Tegra chip) with Nintendo using Valve’s games, and even if they are not promoting Tegra at this point of time, it serves to improve their chance to extend the partnership for Nintendo’s successor.

BTW, NVIDIA's strong partnership with Valve didn't get any Tegra chips into Steam Deck; those are AMD chips powering that portable... maybe Valve should strengthen its AMD partnership by getting somebody to make special versions of old games for that device* too?

For Valve they are in Nvidia’s partnership because its passive income without any work; Nvidia upgrade their classic games, Valve sit back and collect the money. Doesn’t mean Valve wants or have to return the favor though.

If NVIDIA wanted to use old Valve games to make Nintendo slightly happier, they could have just taken their existent Portal 1 and Half-Life 2 ports from NVIDIA Shield and put those on a card. (Portal 1 in Portal CC is mostly the Shield Android port from 2014, and shreds of the HL2 Android are left in the build of Portal CC Switch.) Instead, NVIDIA Lightspeed made a fresh Portal 2 port, complete with online support.

I am not sure why you will pair Portal and Half-Life 2 though except that it’s easier for Nvidia. 2 Portal games in a bundle seems to make more sense. That said I don’t think Half-Life bundle by Nvidia isn’t impossible, but far more likely for Switch over Xbox/Playstation.

Again, NVIDIA Lightspeed has things it could be doing besides porting a couple of Valve's many games to Nintendo hardware. Their RTX remastering projects have been press-worthy works (although now with RTX Remix allowing full AI-generated replacements of textures and models, NVIDIA is turning to even smaller and cheaper MOD groups; only four people are being used to oversee HL2 RTX Remix.) But for whatever reasons, this particular project lined up to make happen.

You’re right that Nvidia have other things they can do too. But I don’t see the need to have any specific reason here for anything like choosing to release a Portal bundle for Switch over RTX remastering some games for some other partners. It’s not like porting Portals to Switch is stopping them from their other projects.

 

[hlm666]

SteamVR fest dec 4th is coming up....

Just saying that Half Life 3 would be on VR, those who played Half Life Alyx knows.

possible HLA spoiler

Spoiler

They better take that ending somewhere, such a prick tease

I'm still not sure why Sony didn't back a truck of cash up to Valve to make Alyx happen for PSVR2. I'll be there day one if that happens.

I think Valve was interested in a cross platform partnership with sony with portal 2 and the whole linked accounts thing. I.E buy a valve made/published game on steam and have the license on your psn account, buy it on psn have it on pc etc. Whatever happened behind closed doors made valve not interested in the console space. I also think they are not driven purely by profit (anymore) with their own projects so maybe ask for other things when other companies want to try buy access to their IP's. Like in this case maybe they tried and valve wanted the psvr2 device to be steamvr compatible? Or maybe it's as simple as when Valve got burned by Oculus they are not going to be caught out like that again.

 

[IbizaPocholo]

On this 25th anniversary celebration, we go back to reveal the man who started it all: the great cyber-lumberjack himself, Ivan the Space Biker.