It seems to be like extra video games are coming from Valve, after Valve president Gabe Newell confirmed the corporate was engaged on quite a lot of new titles – seemingly galvanized by the success of Half-Life: Alyx.
“We undoubtedly have video games in improvement that we’re going to be asserting,” mentioned Newell, in an interview with 1 News, including that “it’s enjoyable to ship video games.”
As ever, Newell would not be drawn on particulars, dismissing a rumored title codenamed ‘Citadel’ that he claimed he’d by no means heard of: “We have now a bunch of code names – are you referring to a code identify? I do not know what ‘Citadel’ is.”
But it surely looks as if the launch of Half-Life: Alyx, a broadly acclaimed VR recreation obtainable to play on the Valve Index, in addition to Oculus and HTC headsets, has impressed the builders in new methods – and extra single-player titles appear sure.
“Alyx was nice – to be again doing single-player video games, that created lots of momentum within the corporate to do extra of that,” mentioned Newell.
Half-Life: Alyx was a shock for followers of the Half-Life sequence, performing as a spin-off of the beloved sci-fi shooters, which have pissed off and fascinated many within the lack of a Half-Life 3 to tie its story threads collectively.
Valve hasn’t appeared to pay an excessive amount of consideration to single-player video games in its current historical past, preferring to concentrate on the multiplayer Dota 2, and even its aggressive card recreation Artifact. After the acquisition of Campo Santo, the developer behind Firewatch, although, it appeared that Valve was renewing an curiosity within the high-quality single-player storytelling it made its identify on.
Provide and demand
The Valve Index VR headset has been available on the market since 2019, and regardless of its excessive price ticket in comparison with the likes of the Oculus Quest 2, garnered rave opinions for its high-spec {hardware}, intuitive Knuckle controllers, and large visual view – even when the SteamVR interface operating on it might use some work.
Even for these eager to check out the headset, although, discovering inventory has been troublesome. Newell delves into this within the interview cited above, claiming that needed parts for the headset had been in extraordinarily excessive demand firstly of the Covid-19 pandemic, making additional manufacturing unattainable.
“We even have parts which might be manufactured in Wuhan and if you’re organising your manufacturing strains it would not happen to you that you simply’re abruptly going to be depending on this peculiar transistor that is sitting on one board you can’t get,” Newell mentioned.
“Everyone ended up operating into the identical downside concurrently – you go from, ‘Oh, we’re in nice form,’ to, ‘What do you imply Apple or Microsoft simply purchased the subsequent two years’ provide of this simply so they may ensure that they are not going to expire?’
“You went from a scenario the place every part was getting accomplished simply in time to folks shopping for up all of the obtainable provides.”
It is likely to be some time till extra folks can check out the pleasures of the Index, although we’re positive Fb’s Oculus Quest 2 will be capable to fill within the gaps till then.
