14 DAY TRIAL // Valve holds one of the best and most appreciated multiplayer games ever released: Counter-Strike. This title is still played by tons of people worldwide and its popularity is not fading away yet, even though the visual aspects are not something we could call current-gen. Now, just imagine how cool it would be to play CS on the Xbox Live Arcade and let me tell you a secret: you're not the only one who's imagining that, Valve is, too!
The announcement was made in an interview with the Official Xbox Magazine, where Valve's marketing man Doug Lombardi admitted that bringing older games to XBLA is something the company would "certainly consider". And he does tell the truth, since Portal: Still Alive was announced and the award winning title will mark Valve's first entry into the Xbox Live scene.
Talking about this particular game, Lombardi said, "It's designed to give Xbox 360 gamers the chance to get Portal, for those who didn't want to go through the Orange Box. It's Portal, the game we all played and loved last year, plus 10-20 new challenges that you'll unlock," he said, adding that the extra challenges would be "exclusive to Xbox 360 in 2008". Great news for all the fanboys out there!
Then, he went on stating that what Valve does with Steam - keeping offers complete and updated price-wise - is something they could try on the Xbox 360 consoles, too, by releasing older and successful games. And since I talked about it at the beginning of the article, I must say it again: Valve, make sure your next XBLA title is Counter-Strike!
As a side-note, for those who are hoping to get the same good news regarding the PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii consoles - not a chance! "Right now, Valve's doing PC and 360 stuff, so anything we would iterate on would be on Xbox. We don't have any immediate plans to do this on PS3 or Nintendo," Lombardi said. What a pity!