VALVe Doesn’t Mind Being Acquired

 

Having Independent game studios/publishers is always a good thing, independent studios place emphasis over quality instead of quantity and you’re always guaranteed a good game. Valve is probably the largest independent developer around and has some of the most popular and best selling titles in it’s portfolio. Unfortunately, that also makes it an attractive target for biggest companies like Activision, EA and Ubisoft. How does Valve feel about being acquired?

Doug Lombardi talks:

If anyone is interested in acquiring Valve, VP Doug Lombardi is “happy to have that conversation,” 

“EA was very progressive about saying, ‘We understand who you guys are. We understand what Steam is. We don’t want Steam to go away.’ Well, they might want Steam to go away, but they’re not asking us to make Steam go away.”

The “valuable add” of EA’s distribution power to Valve’s business was all the company needed from EA. “And [EA Partners] is obviously in a sweet spot right now. I mean, all publishers go through personality changes, and that caused them to be at better points in time,” said Lombardi.

Ofcourse, If Valve was acquired, they would actually release titles/content on time. Which, hey, no one would mind.

PC Gaming - Midyear Report

Press Release:

Resonance-Gaming today released its midyear report on PC video games within the next 6 months. The report combines data from several external sources to provide a simplified data analysis.

Contained within the data are the four main topics which will affect gamers in the next 6 months. This includes Game Genre Distribution, which is the generalized chart using 10 games in each month leading up the end of the year. The chart shows which genres are currently being developed the most, and as a result, which are being developed the least. Read more

PC Gaming is The Future

Valve has been notoriously loud about defending PC gaming and it’s titles, and this time it’s no different. Speaking with Eurogamer, Gabe Newell, the man behind brilliant Half Life franchise has slammed all the false accusations and snarky comments thrown at PC Gaming. According to Valve, PC Gaming is the future. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Where console platforms have merciless and well-funded PR armies poised to combat any criticism, negative stories about the PC - mostly publishers, or developers like Crtyek, complaining of rampant piracy and flat sales - run unimpeded. Sales data that focuses solely on boxed copies sold at retail appear to back them up. Valve has had enough. “There’s a perception problem”

“I don’t want anyone between me and my customers,” says Walker. “I want to write code today and I want all my customers running it tomorrow.” Possible on the PC - Steam in particular, naturally. Not possible on consoles. For his part, Fitterer added achievements to Audiosurf in a total of two days. This constant iteration creates a feedback loop between developer and customer that, reckons Walker, can only improve the quality of the game. “The more I talk to my customers, the better my decisions will be. Without a system of talking to my customers, I will make bad decisions.”

Make you read the whole article, as it’s, for the lack of a better word; Brilliant.

And VAVLe, we couldn’t agree more!

Witches - New Screenshots

We’ve got new screenshots of this (rather obscure) third person action adventure game from spanish games developer Revistronic. In Witches, you play a girl, Tabitha, who is the only one who can destroy the Beast, a creature from the underworld that, together with a horde of freaks, destroyed the Earth. Women replaced men in the battle, as the latter have been almost exterminated in the past. The women in Witches are also keen on wearing ridiculously revealing outfits. (not that anyone’s complaining, mind you) Witches is scheduled to ship in 2008 for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox360. Witches is exclusively being licensed by Schanz International Consultants who are currently looking for world-wide publishers for the title. Interestingly, if you go to the game’s official site, you’ll get a 404: not found error. 14 high resolution skin-a-licious screenshots after the jump. Read more