Valve’s Doug Lombardi recently told the gaming press that gamers shouldn’t be expecting more of the critically-acclaimed Portal in 2008.
"In typical Valve tradition, it won’t be Portal with different colors. I think that when you hit something like that, you have two choices: you can quickly replicate it and stick it out there – do the opportunistic thing and cash in on it; or you can do the crazy thing like we did after Half-Life was so successful and go off and try and say, ‘Okay, that was revolutionary, so its successor has to be equally as revolutionary.’
That’s the spirit I think we’re approaching it in. You won’t see a new Portal at retail this Christmas because of that. That’s the trade-off. People want more, but we don’t want to give them more of the same right away because that would just be boring."
Portal was included as part of Valve’s Orange Box last fall almost as a sort of bonus to Half-Life 2 and its expansions, yet quickly became the most popular portion of the package. This experimental title even managed to capture GamerNode’s Game of the Year Nodie Award, beating out blockbusters such as Bioshock and Super Mario Galaxy. Lombardi undoubtedly hopes for a repeat performance when Portal 2 finally arrives.
"I think you have to be ambitious. For us, that’s really paid off. Half-Life 2 was the right decision, it was painful, six years and upwards of 40 million dollars to develop, but that paid off. That’s our recipe."
[via Eurogamer]
