Valve Developing On Xbox 360

Time mends all wounds, apparently. Valve Software's president and co-founder Gabe Newell openly expressed his distaste for working on next-generation game consoles in the past, but that hasn't stopped the company from announcing plans today to develop future game releases on Xbox 360.

In addition to enhancing their custom Source engine with improvements taking advantage of the Xbox 360 hardware, Valve's focusing on incorporating future releases into Microsoft's Xbox Live service. Xbox Live sure would make an enormous amount of sense with the studio's episodic content plans for Half-Life 2.

Things are a bit fishy, though. What happened to cranky ol' Gabe? Let's break down a comparison of the old-and-busted Gabe PC to new-and-improved Gabe 360.

"Look, I spoke to some people at Microsoft, and as I said, I can't point to a single feature in Vista that I care about that solves problems for us at all. And I had the same conversation with the Xbox 360 guys. It's like, Xbox 360 doesn't make my life any better, and in fact, it makes it a lot worse, as you're telling me I can't count on having a hard drive." -- Gabe Newell, August 2005 to Computer Gaming World

"The combination of Source and the 360 provides game designers the chance to create powerful entertainment experiences. Whether developing a traditional FPS, RTS, RPG or delving into new genres, the Xbox 360 is a great platform for expanding Source and our game experiences." -- Gabe Newell, April 2006 in Xbox 360 development press release