Representing Valve at a recent preview for the company’s upcoming shooter, Left 4 Dead, Doug Lombardi discussed the conspicuous absence of any PlayStation 3 version of the title.

“We’re not PS3 developers,” Lombardi told CVG in an interview. “We’re doing PC and 360 like with Orange Box. EA came to us and said ‘Wow, Orange Box was an incredible project, can we do a PS3 version?’”

On the other hand, Left 4 Dead has still, according to Lombardi, not proven itself as commercially viable as Half-Life for instance, since it is a new property. As such, he does not expect a PS3 version until a company sees a good chance of return on their investment of the time and money necessary to port the game to Sony’s platform, which likely won’t be until the game shows strong sales or even spawns a second title in the series. For Valve’s part, Lombardi cited the studio’s small size as the reason that the developer has limited its efforts to just the PC and, more recently, Xbox 360. I think all of us who waited, seemingly interminably, for the release of The Orange Box can appreciate that concern.