Valve "jealous of Nintendo" as it prepares to "start shipping games again" - Newell

Gabe Newell has not confirmed Half-Life 3 but he has suggested Valve is going to get back into the business of releasing video games.

That's good, isn't it? Not Half-Life 3 confirmed good, but good all the same.

Speaking at a briefing for Artifact, which is not Half-Life 3, Newell said that the card game is the first of a bunch of new games from Valve.

"Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us," said Newell, according to PC Gamer. "So that's sort of good news. Hooray! Valve's going to start shipping games again."

While not mentioning Half-Life 3 in any way, Newell briefly talked about developing games and hardware alongside each other. Valve is looking towards Nintendo's approach, in which the game and the system it's played on go hand in hand.

"We aren't going to be talking about it today, but sort of the big thing, the new arrow we have in our quiver, really, is our ability to develop hardware and software simultaneously," he said.

"We've always been a little bit jealous of companies like Nintendo," he added.

"When Miyamoto is sitting down and thinking about the next version of Zelda or Mario, he's thinking what is the controller going to look like, what sort of graphics and other capabilities. He can introduce new capabilities like motion input because he controls both of those things.

"And he can make the hardware look as good as possible because he's designing the software at the same time that's really going to take advantage of it. So that is something we've been jealous of, and that's something that you'll see us taking advantage of subsequently."

Valve's next game, Artifact, is a free-to-play digital card game that won't in any way be pay-to-win according to PC Games N.

Valve or Newell did not say anything about Half-Life 3 at any point during the presentation.