Also I want to thank Chris Person for filming and processing the video.

[Gamekings, thanks Ben!]

Essentially, [Blizzard is] creating a new Iron Man every month, in terms of the gross revenue they're generating as a studio. Any movie studio would be shouting about that from the rooftops... We think the number of connected PC gamers we are selling our products to dwarf the current generation of consoles put together... There are tremendous opportunities in figuring out how to reach out to those customers.

Via game site Eurogamer, which a nice meaty article up on PC gaming and Valve that's full of tasty tidbits of data and choice quotes. Read it.

Valve: Why the PC is the future [Eurogamer] [Pic]

Talking to a gathering of journalists last week, Valve's Gabe Newell talked up the company's upcoming co-op survival horror shooter.

The game is based on four movies each of which gamers play through as survivors trying to escape an army of the undead. The game will also support an infected versus survivor mode and a split-screen cooperative mode.

In Left 4 Dead gamers live out a horror movie, but to do that the game has to be able to react to the situation, Newell said. The developers managed to do that by having the game procedurally generate character performance, pacing, lighting and music.

This means that depending on how you play and how those with you play the game plays out differently every time/

For instance, Newell showed us a situation where the four survivors of the game barely make it to a gas station near a safe room. The characters, all near death, are confronted by a small number of zombies which slowly appear out of pockets of shadow.

When shown a second time, with the players in much better shape, with more ammo, the zombies stream out of the four corners of the screen coming at the players from all sides until one of the group blows up the nearby gas station, sending it's roof first floating up on a ball of flame and then crashing down among the walking dead.

"The director is a bunch of AI," Newell said. "It sets the stage for climaxes, the pacing. It writes script for your character, creates the drama around you."

I experienced this first hand when playing through a level of the game first hand. Lured away from my group by a zombie, when I ran to find them again I found myself facing the city of zombies by myself and quickly killed. It was a classic "Don't go in there" moment for me.

Newell says that's the brilliance of the game .

"The game is going to play different every time," he said.

Penny Arcade Adventures [Xbox.com]

Gabe pointed out late last week that the webcomic duo appeared in the January 30, New York Sun crossword puzzle. The one up there, to be specific. Twelve down reads:

"Tycho's pal in the webcomic 'Penny Arcade' (4 letters)."

I can't think of any honor greater than being deemed crossword puzzle material.

New York Sun Crosswords

There's not an auteur, not the fiction that movie people tell themselves about the movie occurring in the director's head, and it being your job as someone who's witnessing that on the screen to connect with that vision. That's a terrible way to think about videogames, because they're a collaboration. You've got this lead actor and they don't have a copy of the script, but if they're not having a great time then it doesn't matter what you thought you were doing. All that matters is your ability to engage with him. You have to focus on collaboration, you have to focus on this sharing of authoring the performance with gamers.

Hahaha! "Mac gamer demographic." Anyway...

According to the main man at IMG, Tuncer Deniz, his info comes straight from the folks at Apple, following an e-mail trail that involved Newell and Mr. Steve Jobs himself. It doesn't seem like an unreasonable request to me. Just charged Mac users a thousand bucks for the game and you'll recoup your costs in no time. We're quite used to overpaying for all things Apple.

Thanks for the heads up, Kaji.

One Million Reasons Why Half-Life 2 Isn't on the Mac [Inside Mac Gaming via Apple Insider]

You know, if you get two Valve people together, they're inventing new games. We're just sort of looking to find out how much we can design. God, I would love to work on a turn-based strategy game, personally. Maybe we'll get around to it, but not a lot of people would agree. But our ambitions have stripped our ability to ship by a couple of orders of packaging. But I'm sure there will be some doing new worlds, doing new game types. Hopefully, the flexibility we get by going for smaller projects will let us be more experimental rather than spending half a decade to come up with a whole project.

"We had to ban Bioshock from our offices," Valve boss Gabe Newell told us. "Nobody gets to play it until Orange Box is done - that's our reward to ourselves as a company; everyone gets a copy of Bioshock."

Valve bans Bioshock from the office [CVG]

"Everybody always tells us what a horrible monster EA is supposed to be and we keep waiting for the hair to sprout out and the fangs to grow," Valve MD Gabe Newell jokes

Valve to continue with EA [Eurogamer]

First of all let me just say that the game has everything you would expect and want from a Penny Arcade game. A terrific art style, fun gameplay and hilarious dialog. You kick off the game with a great character customization screen. You can play a male or female character and for a comic style game, you get a surprising amount of variety in facial features, clothes and body types. One great mechanic has your character checking him or herself out whenever you change outfits. The amount of work that goes into the customization is pretty amazing seeing as not only do you see your character in 3D for the game scenes, but he/she is rendered live in 2d as well for the comic book cut scenes.

After the comic panel style intro featuring your customized character, you join up with Gabe and Tycho to solve the mystery of the giant marauding robot that opens the game by tromping it's way through your yard. Once your team is together you can use their various powers (individually and together) to plow your way through such iconic enemies as hobos, clowns mimes and even barber shop quartets. Just as in real life, Gabe's powers rely solely on fisticuffs and up close combat while Tycho (whos moves are the most powerful in the game) takes care of the ranged combat with a tommy gun and his trusty book (reading is power!). Your player character is the melee weapon fighter, starting off with a rake and eventually upgrading to other weapons along the way. Battles are turned based with timed initiatives and each special move requires a "mini game" to complete such as mashing the space bar repeatedly or doing timed moves with the directional arrows. Team combo moves can be done with two or three characters relying on a meter system to let you know when your power up is ready for use.

Watching the game really made me reminisce about the old point and click Lucas Arts games, on which PAA is heavily based. Engaging in dialog with NPCs will give you a variety of choices in answers, many resulting in additional razor sharp commentary by Gabe and Tycho. It should be noted that there are no voiceovers in the game and all conversation is done through comic style word balloons with dialog that had me laughing aloud a lot.

The game is set to be released simultaneously on MAC, PC and Linux with the XBLA version coming soon after. Despite the doubts that many people had concerning the game after the first trailer was shown, I think I can confidently say that gamers will be more than pleased when the first episode is finally released later this year. And in case you were wondering, there will be teabagging, but I'm not going to tell you where. That, you will have to discover for yourself.

They are also running a contest at the show to find a name to be used for a character in the game and PAX goers were encouraged to submit their real names for possible inclusion. I went ahead and submitted mine so perhaps I'll be lucky and my ridiculous sounding name will be chosen. I mean I know it's no Florian Eckhardt, but then, what is.

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Website [Hothead Games]

Sitting down with Valve's Gabe Newell and Doug Lombardi at the Games Convention today, the 11-year anniversary of their company, Mark Wilson and I talked a bit with the two about their expectations for Orange Box, the sustainability of the PC gaming market, Microsoft's failure to deliver on their Vista gaming promises and, inevitably, developing for the Playstation 3, or rather, trying to develop for the Playstation 3. Sorry, no, he didn't really talk about your mom.

Newell called The Orange Box, due out for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in October, an experiment of sorts.

"It's an interesting experiment, is this a good way to attract new customers," Newell said. Valve plans to keep an eye on the sell-through rate to see how the console versions of the game sell and try to figure out if new customers are grabbing it up, or if they buyers are mostly the PC customers that Valve has already won over.

While Newell is a strong supporter of the PC market, one who still would rather make games for that platform than any console, he did express a little disappointment in Microsoft's continued neglect of PC as a gaming platform. Despite the promises made when the company was heralding Vista, not much has changed for PC game developers, Newell said.

"There was no real meat in any of them," he said. Adding that Microsoft has essentially dropped their push for Games for Windows Live. "I don't even know what it is," he said, when I asked him if he viewed it as competition for Steam.

"I can understand why they're not spending a lot of time (on the PC platform), they have enough problems with the Red Ring of Death and price drops," he said.

But despite the lack of marketing for the PC platform, Newell said it still, by far, his favorite platform to work on.

"I love the PC," he said. "It's a great platform. The Internet capabilities are much more mature and the graphics you find on consoles are essentially derivative of the PC and sales on the PC are great."

Newell wasn't nearly as happy with developing for the Playstation 3, saying that the console was much harder to develop for than the Xbox 360.

"I don't think they spent nearly enough time talking to developers when they were developing the PS3," he said. "It's less friendly for developers."

And Newell said he believes the issues are hardware, not software ones.

"It's a hardware architectural problem. I don't think they thought through the Cell architecture. The hardware is only as good as the software it enables."

Newell said Sony should have followed the path Intel took in developing multicore chips.

"They ran a huge amount of software in simulation before they finalized it," he said. "Thats why Core 2 architecture is unbelievably fast running existing code."

Valve Corporation's broadband Steam digital content delivery platform welcomes Capcom. A first for Japanese developers, the company will bring PC versions of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Onimusha 3, Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and future PC games. Yes, Capcom's making more! Says Valve's Gabe Newell:

This initial set of Capcom titles coming to Steam, as well as those coming at a later date, are a perfect fit for the millions of action gaming fans connecting to Steam each week.

When? DMC3 hits in days, while weeks later will see Onimusha 3. When Lost Planet: Extreme Condition hits PCs on June 26th, a Steam version will likewise be available at launch. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix will roll out later in the year. Brian Ashcraft

Capcom Steamed [CS Nation]

Some say the future is one unified console. Others say "bwah?" Put Valve's Gabe Newell in the "bwah?" camp. His two cents:

...as long as you've got Microsoft willing to lose six or seven billion dollars to push a hardware standard, it's hard to see, you know... as long as people are willing to absorb losses on hardware. Sony's doing the same thing. I think they just announced three quarters of a billion dollars in losses. As long as you've got people willing to do that, it's hard to see why gamers aren't going to want to have subsidized hardware from those people, so I'm not sure how soon we'll get to unification.

But, even if these corporations were not willing to lose major money on hardware, would you really want a unified console? Think about it. Brian Ashcraft

Newell Interview [Eurogamer]

Word has it that this Spore-fan created video of Will Wright Wii bowling (with pal Gabe Newell hanging out in the background), has been making the rounds among the Spore team. Yes it's silly, but I still want the Miis. Brian Crecente

In the wake of the execution-style slaying of E3, a peal of protest has gone up from those who really enjoy the temporary sterility, epilepsy and astigmatism that is the result of more than five minutes spent on that infamous showfloor.

Over at Penny Arcade it looks like a new era is dawning, as PAX (pictured at right, being hardcore) and E3 were the two big game conferences and now that the king is dead, long live the king. Says Gabe:

I personally never thought of E3 as our competitor. The two conventions had very different goals. Now E3, at least as we know it is gone but the focus of PAX has not changed. PAX is about gamers not publishers and geek culture instead of multi-million dollar business deals. We have no desire to turn PAX into a new E3 so don't worry about that. The only place I think we might see a noticeable change is in our exhibition hall. It's already quite a spectacle but I think that the lack of an E3 event means our exhibition hall is going to get f***ing nuts.

Hopefully not too nut-f***ing. Although if PAX becomes truly decadent, we can look forward to the tightlipped, impeccably-ponytailed soccer moms that make up 80% of the Bellevue, Washington population being mistaken for booth babes on their breaks at the local Uwajimaya, with hilarious results. Eliza "Crossroads Mall" Gauger

Read more [Penny Arcade]
Official PAX Website! (reg stays open until the 3rd) [PAX]

The personal blog of the Xbox Team's Andre Vrignaud yesterday yielded a fantastic treasure: the heretofore unreleased Xbox 2 Rumor Control strip by Penny Arcade. Says Vrignaud about the strip's origins:

Anyway, after Xenon was greenlit an Xbox-wide meeting was planned where Robbie would detail our plans and get all the internal teams focused on the project. This was to be the internal "big bang" meeting, and we thought it would be pretty cool to see if Penny Arcade might be willing to do a strip that we could distribute with the meeting announcement. I'm pleased to say that they agreed to do us this favor, and the strip you see here was the result. The only "guidance" we gave was that we were looking for a strip about Xbox 2 rumors - that's it.

Vrignaud is taking the admirable step of offer the comic at full resolution on his blog, about 1.2 megs of pure joy. You can print this thing out as a poster if you want, or maybe on one of those stitch-your-photo-into-a-throw-blanket things they do at Rite Aid. Mm...Comfy Arcade...

I've taken the liberty of resizing the monster jpg into something lusciously large, but small enough to be readable on monitors, and stuck it after the jump. I suggest you visit Vrignaud and get the fullsizer, though. Especially if you have a nice printer. Eliza Gauger

Unreleased Penny Arcade Xbox 2 Rumors Strip [Ozymandias]

[Half-Life 2 for Xbox] was the first big retail disappointment we ve had in the history of the company. So that sort of caused us to scratch our heads a little bit. We ve never missed our forecast on any significant product before, so the fact that that product under performed by somewhere between the factor of two to three was really surprising to us. We still haven t figured out what the hell that meant.

Wow! Underperformed by a factor of two to three? That's a pretty big miss, but not surprising considering the already strong FPS line-up on the original Xbox and the time difference between the PC and console releases.

Check the interview for more, including more about Half-Life 2 episodic content and absolutely nothing about Team Fortress 2. No, really. Nothing.

GDC 06: The Valve Interview [Game Informer]