14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Valve might not have any new announcements related to Half Life 3 to make, but the company is ready to announce that it is working on an entirely new Source 2 engine, which is designed to give devs more options for future game development, although at the moment no projects are associated with it.
Jay Stelly, a developer working on the new tech, explains in an official announcement that "With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity. Given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not for just the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favorite games."
Valve says it will offer Source 2 for free to all developers.
The move is very similar to announcements made by both Epic Games for Unreal Engine 4 and by Unity for its entirely new Unity 5 engine.
Valve claims that making it easier for teams to create games means that the PC will continue to dominate the video game space in the coming years.
The company is also saying that Source 2 will have a version compatible with Vulkan, the 3D graphics API which was previously known as Next Generation OpenGL.
At the moment, there are no video game projects associated with the Source 2 engine, but fan speculation will quickly focus on the possibility that Half Life 3 will soon be announced.
Steam Machines and Steam Link are coming this year
The team at Valve is also saying that it is working with its partners to launch the Steam Machines, which were announced last year, in November of this year, with prices close to those of home consoles but with better overall performances.
A new device called the Steam Link is also being introduced, designed to offer players a way to stream content to any device in their home.
Valve is also working with HTC to deliver the first consumer virtual reality device, the Vive, which is set to be released during the fall of this year.
The two companies are saying that the tech incorporated in the new platform will solve all the issues associated with the VR space, but even if it arrives as planned, it will have to deal with competition from Oculus Rift, Project Morpheus and HoloLens from Microsoft.