Valve has notoriously shifted away from developing software over the past few years as they have instead focused on creating hardware and catering the infrastructure of their Steam service. Going forward though, it seems like the company is ready to focus again on making more games.
During a recent event focused on the upcoming Dota 2-inspired card game Artifact, Valve’s co-founder Gabe Newell spoke about the company moving forward and how Artifact isn’t the only game that Valve has in the pipeline. Newell told those in attendance the following:
“Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us. So that’s sort of good news. Hooray! Valve’s going to start shipping games again.”
Newell continued to expand on this by saying that he wouldn’t reveal any further details at the moment, but that Valve has a renewed interest in developing both hardware and software in tandem with one another. He went on to cite Nintendo specifically and how Valve has always been a bit envious of them for being able to juggle both hardware and software creating side-by-side.
“We’ve always been a little bit jealous of companies like Nintendo. When Miyamoto is sitting down and 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. He can introduce new capabilities like motion input because he controls both of those things. And he can make the hardware look as good as possible because he’s designing the software at the same time that’s really going to take advantage of it. So that is something we’ve been jealous of, and that’s something that you’ll see us taking advantage of subsequently.”
While many fans have pined for Valve to return to the days of creating popular titles such as Half-Life, Team Fortress, and Left 4 Dead, it seems like the past few years have been experimental for the studio and have provided them with some valuable learning experiences when it comes to creating hardware. If Valve can take these learnings and apply them when working on new games, we could see the company enter a new age where they return to what made them such a popular developer in the first place while continuing to innovate in the hardware space.