Valve Interview (con'd)

FiringSquad: Since Valve is heavily into digital distribution does it have any plans for supporting Xbox Live Arcade?

Doug Lombardi: Nothing to announce today.

FiringSquad: Valve has supported the mod scene for the original Half-Life and now Half-Life 2 and bought Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat. Are there any
mods for Half-Life 2 that Valve likes and might considered acquiring?

Doug Lombardi: We're always interested in speaking to new folks about distributing more games via Steam - be that Source MOD or a complete 3rd party creation. Red Orchestra is a pretty good example of this.

FiringSquad: Where does Valve see PC games going, especially with things like physics cards and Windows Vista/DirectX10 on the horizon?

Doug Lombardi: The PC games business has never been more interesting. The transition to the next generation consoles is taking a bit longer than everyone expected, and leaving a crater in the industry's revenue projections. Meanwhile, the graphics and processing power available on the PC today already rivals what's to come on those consoles, and the online business models for PC gaming is already light years ahead of the consoles with services such as Steam and money-printing phenomena such as World of WarCraft and Lineage.

FiringSquad: Finally are there any other hints you can give us about Valve's plans at GDC or their overall future plans?

Doug Lombardi: Nothing more at this time. Thanks for the interview.

On behalf of FiringSquad, we’d like to thank Valve’s Doug Lombardi for taking part in this interview. Valve’s episodic content model with Half-Life 2: Episode One is certainly an intriguing idea that an increasing number of game developers are beginning to embrace.