When it comes to high-profile video game developers and publishers, you expect them to continue to release games at a regular rate. However, sometimes that’s not possible, and sometimes, they focus on other avenues of video game development. Such was the case with Valve. Despite being one of the most respect developers of games in the world, they honestly hadn’t released a game in years. Now, with their upcoming title Artifact coming out, Gabe Newell is teasing that it’s the first of many that will be coming to Steam and consoles.
For during a presentation of Artifact yesterday (detailed by IGN), he said: “Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us, so that’s sort of good news. Hurray! Valve is going to start shipping games again.”
But wait, there’s more, according to Newell, Valve won’t just be focusing on software, they’ll also be focusing on hardware, which is something that they’ve been wanting to do for a while.
So, what other games could they be developing? Well, it depends. They could do what they’re doing with Artifact and make games based off of their previous titles (Artifact is a digital card game based in Dota), or, they could make sequels to their previous games. Such as making Team Fortress 3, Portal 3…Half-Life 3…we’re just saying.
But there’s more to wanting to do software and hardware simultaneously than just compulsion, he feels its a key part of the game design process to know what’s coming and how you can make it work to your advantage. Even citing how Nintendo does their work:
“We’ve always been a little bit jealous of companies like Nintendo. When Miyamoto is sitting down thinking about the next version of Zelda or Mario he’s thinking what is the controller going to look like, what sort of graphics and other capabilities, and he can introduce new capabilities like motion input because he controls both of those things.
When can we expect something from Valve? It’s hard to say, but hopefully it’ll be soon.
