Valve Software says cross-platform support is in place for Xbox 360-PC play for Team Fortress 2, after revealing it was technically feasible back in March.

"Technically it's done," the developer's Doug Lombardi told IGN of Xbox 360-PC play; Valve's Robin Walker then followed up to reassure that controller issues won't be, well, issues, explaining that staffers who worked on the Half-Life series on Xbox are working on TF2 on Xbox 360.

"... we did the Xbox port of Half-Life internally, and we did that because we wanted to have the expertise from doing that. Like controller expertise and all the sorts of decisions you've got to make that are different on consoles, we wanted to have that in-house because we knew we'd be doing more Xbox titles and more console titles," Walker said.

"And so the same guys that did that are working on TF2, we have all the tweaks we did to the controls, the sticks and everything. One of the advantages of TF2, relative to something like Counter-Strike, is that it's not so much about aim."

However, despite Valve incorporating cross-platform play between PC and Xbox 360, it's reported that it's not 100 percent definite that such will actually be included in the final release, due at the end of the year.

As for Team Fortress 2 on PS3, chances of cross-platform play are slim.

"The PS3 version is being done by EA over in the UK, and they don't have all the networking stuff in yet to do anything other than [pause] it's rending and running the games and whatnot, but they're still dropping in the network layers. They're going to be using a piece of code that EA uses for its PS3 multiplayer stuff," Lombardi explained.

"Chances are the PS3 version will only play other PS3s. There's zero chance of them talking to 360s."

April 11, 2007