Sunday 28 August 2011

Cross platform gaming with Steam for CS:GO

As we all know Valve are bringing out a new version of Counter Strike under the name Global Offensive. There is now use of cross platform being implimented between Playstation and PC, with Xbox hopefully joining suit in the near future. The PS version of CS:GO will have keyboard and mouse support, along with Playstation move (although I'm not sure how good/accurate this feature will be but fair play to Valve for using peripheral devices available to them) and of course Dual Shock Controllers, so you can play on PS however you choose.

For years there have been debates over which is better consoles or pcs. Now with Valve implimenting this we will be able to find out. While keyboard and mouse are obviously more accurate than controllers, I do think there will be some guys on PS that will give PC gamers a run for there money. Hopefully Valve can work things out with Microsoft and have Steam over on Xbox as well and we will have fully cross platform compatibility. So you can play against your buddies no matter what platform you happen to play and prefer. I do hope this is a sign of things to come and that we see more cross platform games in the future. Microsoft could (and should of IMO) have started cross platform play with GFWL and XBL. All they had to do really was put in keyboard and mouse support for Xbox, so they at least have the choice of having the same as PC guys, and just chuck a few ports of Xbox games over to Windows. While they did start porting over with the likes of Gears of War, and the first two Halos, which were all (apart from the original Halo I reckon anyway) were quite poor ports of the original Xbox games.  Hopefully Valve and MS will work something out as this would be great to see more games playable with people across all three platforms. We shall see soon enough.

I can see a lot of die hard PC gamers complaining about Valve branching out. I applaude them for forming this bridge between gamers. This imo is the first step to creating a bigger, better and greater gaming community for everyone. A chance for Xbox gamers to play with friends that only have a Playstation or PC and vice versa. And for Valve to be doing this is amazing as they do have great PR and actually listen to what customers want (except hiding away a certain Freeman but that's a completely different story. But everyone knows Valve uses Valve Time and gets things done when they get it done). I can see this making us a little more competitive and can prove once and for all who is better, Consolers or PC gamers.

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