Will Steamworks come to Xbox 360?

The PlayStation 3 version of upcoming first-person puzzler Portal 2 is the first on Sony's console to support features from Steamworks. But what about the Xbox 360? Will Steamworks ever arrive alongside an Xbox 360 game?

"This is our first step with it," Valve writer Chet Faliszek told Eurogamer as part of a Portal 2 interview published today. "Sony's been a great partner to work on this. This is just our first experiment on it. What goes next? Well see."

In January Valve boss Gabe Newell declared: "We made a promise to gamers at E3 that Portal 2 for the PS3 would be the best console version of the product."

With Steam support PS3 Portal 2 enjoys quick updates, cross-platform play, Steam cloud saving and chat with the PC and Mac versions.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 has traditionally been a closed platform, but Valve has already seen some movement on the console.

"For the Left 4 Dead series we already had the community make some of our Mutations and we've had those go out on Xbox Live day and date with the PC versions," Faliszek continued. "So obviously there is some flexibility there."

"We'll see. But this is our first foray into this. We'll learn a lot from it and we'll see what happens from there."

Meanwhile, Valve cleared up some confusion around the availability of user-generated Portal 2 content across all versions.

The PlayStation 3 version was expected to allow users to download maps made by PC gamers through its Steam integration, but this is not necessarily the case.

"You won't be able to just download a map for your PS3," Faliszek explained. "There's some weirdness there. Part of the confusion on our part was, there are things we talk about wanting to do, and things we can do. It's this fluid relationship with Sony while we're trying to work out what's best for everybody.

"You won't be able to just attach to somebody else who has that content and download it. We would have to do something to have that happen."

Will Xbox 360 gamers gain access to user-generated content?

"Xbox right now we'd have to package it up directly," said Faliszek. "When we do it on Steam we just make it inclusive to the package. We're seeing about that on PS3. There's nothing set on that."

Christian Donlan went hands-on with Portal 2 last month. "With some promising new ideas and some great old ones," he wrote, "Valve shouldn't have too many troubles enticing people back to its mean-spirited geometrical playground."