"I want to see Half-Life 3": Pitchford wants Valve's resources to be spent on games, not hardware
Half-Life 3 wasn't announced last week, and Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford isn't too pleased. He's shared his thoughts on Valve's new SteamOS and Steam Box announcements in a new interview.
Speaking with GI.biz, Pitchford reflected on Valve's announcements, and lamented the company's focus on hardware and services, instead of games like Half-Life 3.
"There has been some understanding for some time that Valve was looking at some angles in this direction," he began, "so I imagine there was some curiosity and, with just a few folks, perhaps some concern about what they might show up with. I imagine that if I was in a key seat at one of the first parties, after hearing this news, I would probably exhale a bit and imagine that I don't really have anything I have to worry myself about too much coming from this direction for a while.
"If I had a seat at either Sony or Microsoft, depending on which seat I was sitting in, of course, I would probably also be feeling a tiny bit better about my own decisions when I think about how I'm feeling about what I perceive Valve's reasons and decisions to be here."
Valve's controller has certainly piqued Pitchford's interest however. He continued, "I want to fiddle around with their controller. I'm curious what spectrum of propositions will be made with the specific machine offerings, but am sceptical that something will appear that leads me to think it's a good decision to replace my PC.
"Maybe that's not their aim - we'll all learn more soon. But the burden to add an additional thing beyond the PC I am likely to keep is pretty high, so we'll see if any of their machines can get me there if their intent is that these are dedicated Steam OS machines."
Like many of you out there, Pitchford wanted Half-Life 3, not hardware. He concluded, "I want to see Half-Life 3 or other exciting and big and original offerings from these guys who are amongst the best in the world at crafting interactive entertainment and are resourced better than anyone. As long as Steam and Valve are one entity, I am always going to feel uneasy that attention and resources towards the platform is distracting attention and resources away from the entertainment they could (should?) be creating.
"I guess I am just a greedy gamer who wants to be blown away playing more of the best, new video games in the world, so I selfishly want to know that the incredible talent at Valve is spending 100 percent of their mindshare building new video games!"
What did you make of Valve's big announcements? Did you want to see a game reveal rather than SteamOS, the Steam Box line and the Valve' controller? Let us know below.