We all know how Valve doesn't dig Sony's PlayStation 3. We've all heard Gabe Newell bash the console public on more than one occasion, after all. But what's this going on? Valve Corporation is having a change of heart? No less than Doug Lombardi confirms as much.

We all know that Valve's Half-Life 2: Episode 2 kicked some serious booty last year, and it's still among today's favorites because of its superior gameplay. The only downside in this scenario is that fans are asking for more, and they've started looking at E3 2008 as the possible birthplace of the next episode. Valve says "not yet", but they've got another thing for itchy trigger fingers. More after the jump.

As the world draws closer to affordable broadband service and does away with easily scratched optical media, online distribution services, such as Valve Software's Steam, continue to reach a wider audience. Valve was able to look back to 2007 and discovered that their user base has just topped off to over 15 million registered accounts. And what's more, their sales growth peaked to approximately 160% year-on-year over the holidays.

If you've hummed to the tune of Still Alive one too many times, or fantasized going into war with the invigorating sounds of Team Fortress 2 (Xbox 360, PC, PS3), then you might want to consider buying the original soundtrack of The Orange Box.

This disc full of unique audio goodness can be yours for the paltry sum of US$ 9.95. Check out the newly-released product in the full article.

It's always a wonder why gaming is not so big in Macintosh as much as it is in Windows operating systems, and its just a shame why there's so many games that don't make it to Apples and Macintoshes. Case in point: the Half-Life franchise. Kikizo talked with Valve's big boss Gabe Newell about the issue, and things aren't looking so cool with the future of gaming in Apple's operating systems.

Newell said that he tried to talk with Apple about how to improve gaming on the Macintosh, and while they gave a positive response, he said that Apple didn't follow up on what was agreed upon:

Well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go "wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming". And then we'll say, "OK, here are three things you could do to make that better", and then they say OK, and then we never see them again.

An even sadder fact is that whenever Newell meets with another group sent by Apple, they were most likely unaware on what was agreed upon in previous meetings. Because of this, Newell is now convinced that Apple is not serious on gaming at all. "None of the things developers ask them to do are done," he said. "And as a result, there's no gaming market there to speak of."

It truly is a sad outlook for Macintosh users hoping to get more games in the future. Hopefully Apple will listen this time: Newell does seem to know what he is talking about after all, with his valuable inputs about managing a company as well as dealing with customers.


Check out the Read link for the entire interview!

After passing the buck to the gamers themselves on Half-Life's (could be last) episodic content, Gabe Newell is confidently saying that Valve is far from losing steam on the said franchise. Especially not when they're inching closer to the grand finale in the form of Episode Three.

In fact, there's still so many possible angles and universes for them to cover. Says Newell:

We'd certainly love to be working in other universes because any time you get two Valve people together they come up with five game ideas and thirteen universes that they would like to tell and play them in. So there's a lot of Half-Life left at Valve.

Portal was also mentioned as one of those carrying the interesting stories, such as those on Aperture Science, even before the team came up with the idea that it could be host to other stories in other Half-life universes. It certainly sounds like the spirit of Half-Life will live on even after Episode Three. Stay tuned for more clues, hints, and news on the matter.

Depending on gamer feedback, Half-Life 2: Episode Three's release may be the last episodic update for the Half-Life franchise, or so Valve's Gabe Newell said.

"OK, so what do you want?" is the question that Newell wants to pose to Half-Life fans regarding the continuation of it's current episodic method of updating the franchise.

Newell said that doling out episodic releases lets Valve update their games much faster than building full-scale game sequels. However, they're going to have a chat with gamers once the third episode is out, and letting them decide to either keep or junk the episodic scheme based on how they liked the three Half Life 2 episodes. Newell asked:

Do you want us to do more episodes? Do you want us to really tighten down the time frames and look at the scope of what we're doing so that that's possible, for us to go back to the large monolithic projects?

Valve is also working on their episodic approach, and that they would want to get some tips from Telltale Games (creator of Sam and Max) as well as World of Warcraft's Blizzard.

Given the sporadic negative impression on publisher Electronic Arts, it might be a surprise to some that game developers would remain under its wings. But Valve Software, oft advocates of the PC gaming platform, has developed a good relationship with the international publisher and will stick with Electronic Arts even after The Orange Box (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Windows PC over DVD) finally ships.

"Everybody always tells us what a horrible monster EA is supposed to be and we keep waiting for the hair to sprout out and the fangs to grow," said Gabe Newell of Valve Corporation. Valve and Turtle Rock Studios' Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360, Windows PC over DVD), offered back in QuakeCon 07, will also be published by EA.

"We've had a great relationship with them so far, and bringing more titles to that like Left 4 Dead seems to be a natural consequence of that," he added. Whether or not another Left 4 Dead demonstration will be offered freely is definitely in Valve's hands, but they'd like to think there's a good chance it would happen again. Newell told Eurogamer:

What we're finding is any time that we remind ourselves that we're in collaboration with the community, we benefit, whether it's guest passes to help introduce new people to our franchises, or free weekends or whatever, it's easily the best way we have of getting people to be excited about the games that we have, so we're going to pull out all the stops with Left 4 Dead.

 

Naysayers would keep on complaining how many first-person shooters look alike, but some development companies make it a point that their titles won't be like the latest big thing in the market. Valve Corporation told CVG that BioShock, 2K Games' explosive FPS that earned much praise since its recent release, is banned from the office until Half-Life: Episode Two and The Orange Box are done.

Not only does it say much about determination to make the games good without influence from previous successful hits, but also gives the folks at Valve an incentive to work hard. "Nobody gets to play it until Orange Box is done - that's our reward to ourselves as a company; everyone gets a copy of BioShock," said co-founder Gabe Newell.

Newell went on, saying BioShock developer Irrational Games "is the latest example of people who've descended from the Id Software/Looking Glass family tree." This points at legends like Doom and BioShock's spiritual predecessor, System Shock, as role models for anyone that followed Id and Looking Glass. "There's nobody left who isn't a descendant of those two companies," he continued.

Buy: [Bioshock (Games for Windows)]
Buy: [Bioshock (Xbox 360)]

Developing a single game for three consoles helps in increasing awareness of the pros and cons of each platforms, and Valve's Gabe Newell of Half Life 2: Orange Box (for the PC, PS3, Xbox 360) is no exception.

Newell has beef against all the three consoles that he worked on for the great-looking Half Life 2 installment, and even his preferred platform, the PC, is not spared. Games for Windows Live is one of his pet peeves towards Microsoft, saying that the software mogul still continues to neglect gaming on PC despite the innovations Vista had presented. "I don't even know what it is," said Newell about Games for Windows Live.

He does acknowledge that Microsoft is still way over its head with its current Red Ring of Death issues, which he supposed is the reason why there is a lack of marketing for the PC at the moment. Nevertheless, he prefers developing games for the PC than any other platform. "It's a great platform. The Internet capabilities are much more mature and the graphics you find on consoles are essentially derivative of the PC and sales on the PC are great."

On the other hand, Newell didn't have a more enjoyable experience with developing a game for the PS3, saying that Sony's console was not developer-friendly. He supposed that Sony didn't get enough developer input before putting out their console in the market, and that certain flaw hampered the PS3's hardware potential despite the powerful Cell Processors.

Despite the flaws of each console, Valve's Half Life 2: Orange Box will be out for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in October. Stay tuned for more updates!