Arma 3 will not be available on the recently announced PlayStation 4 or the next Xbox. Rather, Bohemia Interactive's military simulator will launch as a Steam exclusive. The decision for a Steam-only release will allow Bohemia Interactive to overcome setbacks in development and release Arma 3 in 2013.
“As an independent developer, we’re constantly evaluating the way we develop, distribute and publish games. Valve made tremendous improvements to their system, which made the installation/update process much more user-friendly – for both developers and customers," said Bohemia Interactive's founder and CEO, Marek Španěl.
“We realize that some people may find it difficult to migrate to a new platform, especially if they were used to purchasing and playing our games without any external third-party application. We have evaluated the pros and cons, but in the end Steam enables us to release Arma 3, brings massive advantages to the game, and improves the end-user experience. Not to forget, the majority of our players already come from Steam."
Bohemia also has plans to take advantage of Valve's Steamworks to help enable features that are "impossible to develop in-house, on time."
Senior Designer Joris-Jan Van 't Land added: “Valve’s Steamworks offers some cool features that can help us to enhance the Arma experience where it matters. We’ll save the exact details for a later update, but to summarize our priorities in two key words: user-generated content and multiplayer."
Remember, we saw an early build of Arma 3 all the way back at 2011's E3. At the time it was expected to be ready by summer 2012, so it looks like the move to Steam-only is a good one. Boxed copies of Arma 3 will still be available at retail in most regions, if you're the collector type. Inside the package you'll find either Steam Codes or a DVD to help speed up installation.
