Excellent! But when will it ship? Announcements of announcements make gamers grumbly too.

Whether that announcement of new... something for Left 4 Dead will placate the masses feeling slighted by the impending arrival of Left 4 Dead 2 we don't know. But Valve's Doug Lombardi tells CVG that someday, somehow this whole process of shipping two games within a year's time will all make sense when viewed from the mount of the grander scheme.

Lombardi also teases more Left 4 Dead 2 related announcements, presumably a doling out of details about new Special Infected types, new weapons and new campaigns. Oh, and there will be a L4D2 demo, apparently, giving you the opportunity to go hands-on with that frying pan before November.

Left 4 Dead DLC announcement soon [CVG]

Yeah, there's this slapstick quality to the game that really comes to life on Versus mode. When you're playing as a Boomer, your best shot is to vomit on somebody and maybe see the horde come in before you get taken out. You're not going to be around too long.

It's funny how something that simple and insane-sounding is fun and so satisfying. It's really something different than you've done in a game before, and I think that's part of the charm of it. It's like, "Wow, I vomited on all these people and I get to watch all these zombies and rip them to shreds." You know, there's this sense of a little bit of the accomplishment thing, but then there's also this slapstick moment where it's like, "I vomited on him."

Valve, breaking new ground in in-game upchucking.

Left 4 Dead Interview: Versus Mode, Demo Details, and the Joy of Vomit [Shacknews]

Valve's Doug Lombardi:

So I mean, we're taking more time because it's a more ambitious project. We also sort of had Left 4 Dead become this big thing in the middle of it that we wanted to spend more time on, and you've just got a lot of stuff that we spent this year doing with Team Fortress 2 updates and what have you. So there's just a lot going on, and then an ambitious project on top of it caused the schedule to move out a little bit from the delta of the last three releases in the franchise.

Goddamnit Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead, how dare you...ah, who are we kidding. We can't get mad at you guys.

Valve on Episode Three: 'A More Ambitious Project' [Shacknews]

That means we should expect at least a 19 month down time between the second and third episodes, putting the release of Episode Three no earlier than May of 2009, if our calculations are correct. Fortunately, Lombardi hints that Valve "may at the very end of the year" show something on Half-Life 2: Episode Three, after Left 4 Dead goes out the door and sells a bazillion copies.

Interview: Valve's Doug Lombardi [Kikizo]

There were only a few noticeable changes in the Games Convention build. It was our first look at the updated models and skins for the four playable characters, each given a new coat of paint to help further distinguish them from the hordes of undead.

But it was the new touches of detail — and the promise of more Left 4 Dead — that sparked our interest once again.

Taking a page from the book of Portal (and Half-Life 2, really), Doug Lombardi from Valve told us that Left 4 Dead would feature subtle hints fleshing out the game's back story. Graffiti and scratches peppered the walls of the zombie filled city, with messages to and from survivors scrawled upon the walls of the game's safe rooms.

Since we don't know much about the who, what, when, where and how of the zombie apocalypse the game is set against, we look forward to rooting out the details.

And like Team Fortress 2, Valve plans to feed Left 4 Dead players with regular updates. New scenarios are definitely in the works as future downloadable content through Steam, but new monster types and new weapons sound like a distinct possibility.

But we'll save our fervor for Left 4 Dead's bonus content for later. For now, we just want the game.

Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi got that piece of business out of the way just before our latest Left 4 Dead demo, saying that the developer wanted to build up a massive update for Xbox 360 users before delivering. Given that Valve is being forced to charge for the update, they wanted to ensure that 360 owners were getting their money's worth.

So, how much? The price isn't final, but Valve is hoping to go as low as possible, aiming for a ten dollar price tag. Not too shabby. Sorry, PS3 owners, no word on when or if Valve will be giving you the same Team Fortress 2 updates.

There is no PS3 version of Left 4 Dead currently in production.

Hey, maybe there will be one day! But that day is not today.

Left 4 Dead on the PS3? [IGN Thanks, Duong!]

In this terrifying edition of Justify Your Game, Doug Lombardi takes a crack at justifying Valve's upcoming co-op FPS Left 4 Dead. Can he persuade us in 15 seconds?

"It's about giving gamers more choices, more points of entry to get to the party, open more gates to the theme park as it were," he said. "It makes a lot of sense for us.

"The main idea is that this is Portal available as a download, and there is additional content as advanced challenges that will be available to you after you finish the critical path of the game."

But will we be seeing more of GlaDOS this time around, or perhaps an extended storyline?

"No," he said, breaking hearts everywhere. "That's for a game to be named later perhaps."

To check out our full interview with Lombardi and hear him pontificate on everything from Left 4 Dead Machinima to Steam as an archive for games hit up the link below.

Left 4 Dead May Get Machinima Maker Post Launch [Kotaku]

According to Valve's marketing director Doug Lombardi Half-Life 2: Episode Three won't be making an appearance at E3 this year, with the listing chalked up to a "misprint (or something)." We would assume that if Valve is showcasing anything at E3 this year, it will be Left 4 Dead which is planned for a November 4 release.

There's a lot of people at Valve who are parents and would love to make a game for kids.

We all play the Wii a lot and we think that the proper way for Valve to approach the Wii would be to make something cool designed specifically for it.

If we ever get a game that fits that, we'd love to do that. I'd love to have a game that we gave away saying 'however much you want to invest in this, this is yours'.

I'd love to sell Portal on Xbox live. [But] the platform holders aren't doing that right now. There's a size limit and all kinds of other things.

We've asked them, we said we were open to it. So it's a decision for the platform holder and how they want to make the games available and how much bandwidth they want to [allow].

Or is the real concern the "all kinds of other things" that Lombardi mentioned—maybe that Microsoft takes a bigger cut of digital distribution profits than Valve would like?

Portal was offered to XBLA, but rejected [GamesIndustry]

We contacted Valve to clarify and their VP of marketing Doug Lombardi informed us that, "The platform holder owns the final call." So just as we'd suspected, whether or not we see these maps for free is indeed up to Sony and Microsoft.

Fortunately, Lombardi does throw himself a blue portal through which to escape, punctuating his denial to CVG with a "not yet, anyway." Consider your heartstrings toyed with, Wii owners!

No Portal on Wii, says Valve [CVG]

Of course, those products will also be available via the company's Steam platform, meaning users won't need to buy any boxed product at all.

However, if you're attached to holding a physical product, Doug Lombardi of Valve told IGN's PC group that:

Those who purchase the PC version of The Orange Box will get three separate Steam product codes: One for the three new games, one for HL2, and one for Episode One. This way a PC Orange Box owner can give away their Half-Life 2 or Episode One unused Steam product codes if they don't need a copy of those games.

Lombardi didn't provide explanation for the decision, but I'm going to chalk it up to avoiding customer confusion. Shipping and marketing a single product across three platforms is going to make this much easier for the general public to wrap their noodles 'round. Michael McWhertor

Black Box in a Pine Box [IGN]

Attention Counter-Strike players, your game is about to become infested with in-game advertising courtesy of Valve and IGA. In an interview with Valve's Doug Lombardi, CS-Nation questioned the marketing director on how the ads would be implemented and the reasoning behind the commercial change to the seven-year old mod with a diehard community.

In-game advertisements aren't necessarily a new thing in certain maps, but it appears Valve will dedicate much more real estate to promotional space. According to Lombardi:

There will be some ads posted on walls in the game world, an ad on the scoreboard screen, and one in the letterboxed area of Spectator mode.

However, the company plans to keep it tasteful.

Counter-Strike levels aren't going to turn into Times Square or a Nextel Cup racecar. We have control over what ads show up in Counter-Strike and how they are presented.

You graphics whores out there who've moved on to the Source port of Counter-Strike should expect to see the same soon. Lombardi confirms that Valve considers the 1.6 implementation a test and will guage community response. I can only assume that more in-game ads from Valve and its partner are inevitable. Michael McWhertor

Advertisements Coming to CS [CS-Nation]

Look I hate to keep being the bearer of bad news, but here it comes again. Valve's Doug Lombardi confirmed the Half-Life 2 Episode Two delay to Computer & Video Games, offering up a heartbreakingly vague "summer 2007" release date. And that's the "target".

You know what this means. No Portal until summer. No Team Fortress 2 until summer. No happiness on Earth until summer.

I'm starting to think that "Best Action Game of E3 1999" Team Fortress 2 is again bogging down development, cursing all future Valve releases. This game must be destroyed to save us all! Michael McWhertor

HL2: Episode Two, Portal, TF2 all slip [C&VG]