Next Generation posted yet another excellent, thought-provoking interview with Valve’s Gabe Newell. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I highly recommend it.
Gabe’s a persistently good interview, and while I understand he rubs some of us the wrong way (particularly if you happen to love a console that’s in his crosshairs at the moment), there’s always a lot of thought in what he says. You can really tell that he loves the craft and honestly digs making games for people that love games.
A few highlights:
- The Wii is a big hole in our strategy right now… The Wii is clearly challenging game designers to think very, very differently. The DS did the same thing. When I saw the DS before it shipped, I thought the PSP was going to crush it. ‘What’s this stupid gimmick with the touchscreen?’ As soon as I saw the games that Nintendo did, as a game designer, I went, ‘Oh wow, I totally marginalised these guys incorrectly’.
Just about everyone that followed the DS and PSP launches can identify with this. PSP was billed as the more “grown up” system – it plays movies and MP3s, shipped with a copy of Spider-Man 2, and had a promising launch lineup with entries like Lumines and Wipeout Pure. Hey, I survived that midnight launch too.
The DS couldn’t compare at first blush. A stellar lineup of third- and first-party titles and a huge, active fanbase put the Gameboy’s little brother on the map. Pokemon’s never been my thing, but I can really see the appeal of being able to play anyone, anywhere. And now they’re just dropping AAA titles left and right, across all audiences.
Just like breakfast food or a really good Dave Jaffe interview, there’s lots of nutritious goodness in there. Check it out. Of course, it’s not all wine and roses:
- I think [PS3 is] a waste of everybody’s time… I don’t think they’re going to make money off their box. I don’t think it’s a good solution.
It’s no surprise to see mud flung in Sony’s direction… but usually it’s coming from someone at Microsoft, or Sega in previous generations. It’s definitely a risk for a guy at such a freewheeling, platform-agnostic shop to say something like that, but there’s a lot of truth here. And hey, when your IP is so stong that you can rtail it under a name like “The Orange Box,” go nuts…
