Ok, late for the party, again...
Lately I have seen a lot of posts blaming Valve for not developing for the PS3. I dont own a "next-gen" console, so this time around I will be trying to make a couple of points or two down the road of this mini article... ok, not so mini.

Newell stated what he thinks about the ps3, exactly he said "playstation 3 is a total disaster".
I sort of get the guy idea: he is a programmer with a company and a limited staff, if he wants to get into the development of a console then he is going to have to pour some money into it: a team and then time until they gain experience. And that is no small chunk of money we are talking about, even for a company like Valve who right now sort of feeds from the digital distribution system they got, STEAM. Ok, they have relative strong sales of their own products, true, but still, Valve has around 150 employees... lots of mouths to feed every month. I own a share of a small company that does 3d work here in my country, it barely has 25 employees and you have to pay each one of them at the end of the month, income or no income. And we are not talking about a glass factory here, this is specialized people, you invest time and money in most of them and run with the risk that they will go away to someone that will pay them more money. To keep it simple, your strategic long term investment is not the equipment, the pc´s or even in some cases the product, but the people you hire.
I say this because sometimes we tend to think that most of this companies are swimming in money. Maybe you will if you have a hit like GTAIV or who knows: Orange Box. But that money from sales is going to help you survive the next development cycle. Development cycles are longer and more expensive than ever before in the industry and in this specific case Valve is not known for being fast in the development of a game... Half Life 2 costed around 25 million dollars at the time, they got to make such a strong investment in the company that even Newell partner leaved because he said he was "tired"... yeah, tired and didnt want to risk a couple of hard earned millions. So, never do maths in other people´s pockets, you never know.
Luckly for Valve they have STEAM going on, so they are sort of a "publisher" inside a studio. So their case is different from other studios of their size, maybe they can affoard to pour more money into their games and pollish them well, take the time they need without the financial pressure for having the milking cow there if they need lets say another six months for a game to be ready.

Which takes us back to the PS3 development.
The ps3 is hard to develop for. This is an obvious statement, so obvious and so repeated that maybe is true. Probably is not that bad and its actually not too different from the 360, or maybe is just as different as a women and a shemale... who knows, maye it goes in tastes like cream and menta. Or maybe developers are dick heads and is the most easy console to develope for but they dont know it. Anyhow back to the normal studio with 150 employees allready there. You can develop for a PC and a 360, the team is there, you got new ip´s in the workhouse and even a team which is pushing the technology for tomorrows needs (you cant expect the Source engine to be around forever). Seriously, you got enough in your hands allready: a bunch of people, games, technology and your distribution company. You dont even get sleep at nights because the day has 24 hours. You are tired of meetings and dont have enough sex on weekends becase you are old, fat and tired and sometimes have to work on weekends... you are in the shoes of Gabe Newell. The ps3 is around there, is a market and I believe a very interesting one that will increase a lot in the future. The platform has their pro´s over the 360 for the consumer and for the developer: some pro´s are there (blu ray for better storage, processing power to cure cancer and free multiplayer), and cons that matter to you, the developer, like noone in your team can handle the job in the first place: So why bother?
Thats the developer perspective. The owner of the ps3 considers his console an investment in entertainment. Any consumer with a little bit of brain does this, I consider my pc a investment in myself (is a porno machine!). So is logic to understand why they hate Valve´s decission of not going with the PS3 even if its a feeling (I irrationally hate the decissions of some publishers of not making games for the PC, but they make sense, financialy speaking).
So what will probably happend is that some company like EA (which is in good terms with valve), will probably take the port job and do it for the PS3. Is going to take a while, is not going to be an overnight job and probably is not going to be as good as the PC or 360 version. The developer wont take any chances here but they will gladly take the money from it. At the end of the day is about the money.

I dont want to go bananas here, but Valve is one of the few studios that continues to make solid games for the PC market in an era that you have waves of games coming to the 360, some good, some bad... which is not a bad thing, but the console breaks and I dont own one so I stick to my PC for the moment and hope for some of those titles to come to the PC. I would love to have a console but hey: I allready said so, I live in the third world, if the thing breaks, and is going to in the case of the 360, then my investment is lost on the first place.
"Buy a PS3". Yeah, I would if I wanted a blu ray player, but in order to play games in a PS3 I need to crack it, they dont sell games around here, and if they do they cost around 100 dollars each (the crappy and old ones). And crack the ps3 seems to be complicated because of the blu ray thingie. So no console game for me.
I will rant how is to be a gamer in the third world another time.