Valve Delays Portal 2, Squashes Duke Nukem Rumors

SKYMTL writes "In a tongue-in-cheek commentary, Valve has announced the delay of Portal 2 and thrown water on the rumor fires regarding its E3 'surprise.' This surprise was rumored to be either Half-Life 3 or the revival of Duke Nukem, and it looks like neither will happen anytime soon."

Comments

Half-Life 3?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't they get Half-Life 2 Episode 3 done first?

Re:Half-Life 3?

[vrmlguy]

Personally, I'm interested in the narrative direction that Valve takes in Portal 2. The original's protagonist started as a relatively weak, essentially passive, woman, who only comes out of her introverted shell after much prodding by GLADOS. The sequel needs to go in a different direction, with an extroverted male protagonist. He should be a body builder, with a blond crew-cut, wearing aviator glasses, and smoking a cigar. You know, like this.

Re:Half-Life 3?

[PlasmaEye]

You know, like this.

Why am I not surprised that there is a 404 error on the other side of that link?

Re:Half-Life 3?

[Tim C]

"I have come here to eat cake and kick ass, and I'm all outta cake."

Re:Half-Life 3?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the whole point of episodic releases were that they reduced the time for releasing the product? You know, smaller chunks of the game more often?
HL2 - Nov 2004
Ep1 - June 2006
Ep2 - Oct 2007
Ep3 - its goddamn mid 2010 and still no sign of it.

Hmmm, that worked out well then. Think of this Valve - people expected ep3 out at the end of 2008. Each year you put the damn game back, all your customers expect even more for the game to be. By the time this actually comes out, there is no way you could ever live up to their expectations - 3+ years is enough time to create a standalone game from scratch.

Oh well, I'll get the popcorn on standby for when they actually release it - knowing them, it'll be slightly longer than ep2, and there'll be a lot of fanboys trying to justify that a slightly higher texture resolution/lens flare/slightly more complicated physics puzzle is enough to justify the extra 2 years wait.

Re:Half-Life 3?

[elrous0]

Hail to the cake, baby.

Re:Half-Life 3?

[Tobor the Eighth Man]

I remember saying almost this exact same thing while Half-Life 2 kept getting pushed further and further back: they'd waited too long, any hopes of a franchise were dashed, nobody cared, etc. etc. Remember, it was a delay of almost six years between HL and HL2. And imagine how foolish I felt when I actually played HL2, it sold extremely well, and I ultimately had to eat those words. The franchise is gonna be fine, even if it takes them another year to release it. People will still buy it. The fact that people are so pissed about the delay just goes to demonstrate that.

Valve has become more open in the past two years, but they're still a pretty mysterious company that is often reticent to publicize ongoing development efforts. So we've got no way of knowing what they're currently working on or how close to release it may be.

Re:Half-Life 3?

[IndustrialComplex]

If it comes out this year, or in 2011, will people still want it? I'm sure it will hurt them, the engine is getting old, fans are feeling alienated. Way to blow a fantastic franchise Valve.

And yet people still put faith into Activision/Blizzard that by the time they get around to the third installment of Starcraft2, they won't have lost interest/developers/goodfaith and will put out something at the same quality (if they ever get around to it) as the first 'third' of the game.

Re:Half-Life 3?

[VGPowerlord]

If it comes out this year, or in 2011, will people still want it? I'm sure it will hurt them, the engine is getting old, fans are feeling alienated. Way to blow a fantastic franchise Valve.

The Source engine is continuously updated. The most recent version is the one used in Left 4 Dead 2, released in late 2009.

As of right now, there are two major versions of the Source engine that are continuously bugfixed, and sometimes have features backported from the newer to the older:
1. Orange Box Engine*, used by Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source, and Counter-Strike: Source Beta (last updated 2010 May 18)
2. Left 4 Dead 2 Engine, used by Left 4 Dead 2 (last updated 2010 June 09 (yesterday))

Team Fortress 2 is being released for Mac today, so we may see an update for the Orange Box game engine as well.

* The Orange Box engine was split into two separate engines during an engine update earlier this year. One version is used by HL2: Episode 2 and Portal, the other by Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source, and Counter-Strike: Source Beta.

Re:Half-Life 3?

[zerocool^]

To be fair, Starcraft is ENTIRELY an anomaly in the entire history of video gaming. Blizzard have a pretty good idea that people are and will be interested in Starcraft... because the game is still selling.

Seriously, the game came out 11 years, 2 months, and 10 days ago. Literally a week ago, I was in a GameStop and saw a brand new, in box copy of the starcraft battlechest edition on the shelf, for sale.

I cannot think of any other game that is still being sold as new that's anywhere NEAR that old - discounting things like the Civ anniversary pack or the C&C: First Decade pack, and other re-releases. This game has real staying power.

Anyway, like Yahtzee said: The point of episodic content is to release smaller sections of game, more frequently, at a lower cost. Valve have gotten the small sections and lower cost down, but the frequency is downright glacial. Half Life 2 Episode 2 Manchester United 1 took years for about 5-6 hours of gameplay. So, IMO, I hope they're releasing Ep3 via announcement at E3, but it wouldn't surprise me if they took another 18 months for ep3, and then another 3-4 years for HL3.

Stupid Valve. WE WANT GAMES, WE WILL PAY.

~X

Re:Eh...

[sammyF70]

Which might be the reason why it's in slashdot/games ... I'm just guessing here of course.

MOD PARENT UP!!

[AndrewStephens]

Ostensibly whatever it is Valve is going to be revealing at E3 is going to be a game, a new game perhaps or something like that.

+1 Insightful

I think we can by now

[silentcoder]

safely addapt Stephen Hawking's theory to this situation and state that laws of the universe conspire to prevent anybody ever actually finishing the development of Duke Nukem Forever.
True the evidence is purely anecdotal, but then the same goes for his original application of the concept to time machines so that's alright then.

Re:I think we can by now

[MichaelSmith]

safely addapt Stephen Hawking's theory to this situation and state that laws of the universe conspire to prevent anybody ever actually finishing the development of Duke Nukem Forever.
True the evidence is purely anecdotal, but then the same goes for his original application of the concept to time machines so that's alright then.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Re:Eh...

[xtracto]

Ostensibly whatever it is Valve is going to be revealing at E3 is going to be a game, a new game perhaps or something like that. Either way it's hard to get exited about.

OMG Sherlock, have you got inside info or something?
You mean that what a game publisher company will reveal at an Electronic Entertainment Expo is ... wait for it, a video game. Man, you really got amazing inference skills!

Now, that you do not get excited about that only means that you do not care about such type of entertainment; but hey, that's a completely different stories.

Re:Eh...

[brunes69]

Why do you have the Slashdot/Games section on if you don't care about games?

Re:Eh...

[quantumplacet]

Man are you gonna look stupid when Valve releases the cure for cancer at E3 this year.

Makes sense

[TheRealQuestor]

If they admitted that it was either of them there wouldn't be much point of a surprise then.

Re:Makes sense

[Abstrackt]

A surprise is something people don't expect. Previous Portal 2 teaser material has shown that Valve fully expect the Internet to dissect everything it says and does. When they say "we've got a surprise for E3" they're either lying or it's something they know no-one could predict. HL2E3 and DNF are both eminently predictable and denying them doesn't make them any more surprising, so it's neither of those.

It will be something to do with Portal 2, a game which won't be released for another year, at least, so don't get too excited.

So you're saying that the announcement is a lie?

Re:Noooooooooo

[Pharmboy]

Duke Nukem Forever will happen eventually.
It's a huge pile of money sitting on the table, waiting for someone to pick it up.

I have said the same of the 1997 game "Redneck Rampage", which the rights has been bought and sold many times but no one has developed the next generation. Still one of the funnest FPS games ever made. There are rumors of a new version but they are only rumors. Granted, not exactly as big as Duke, but it was still a hugely successful game.

As silly or goofy as the game might seem, it was a damn fine example of what you can do when you use good physics, solid game play, and good old fashioned gutter humor. TF2 is another good example, just with different humor.

Re:Quick! Someone coin a new meme!

[mr_mischief]

There have been several good Duke Nukem games actually finished and released, you realize? This one is "Duke Nukem Forever". So one might say "Duke Nukem Forever'ed", or just "DNF'ed". "DNF" has a long history from auto racing (and probably from other racing before that). It's an abbreviation for "did not finish", which is apropos for the game.

So I think you'll find "DNF" is the phrasing of choice for such a situation, really.

Re:phew

[Delusion_]

You wrote "cannot be purchased".

What you meant to write is "cannot be as easily pirated by people who don't know what they're doing".

Full Press Release

[Anonymous Coward]

VALVE ANNOUNCES MAKING GAMES IS HARD
June 9, 2010 — Aperture Science, doing business as Aperture Laboratories LLC, in partnership with Valve today announced the successful completion of an ethics-review-panel-supervised release date restructuring process. Portal 2, the sequel to the ground-breaking title that earned over 30 Game of the Year awards despite missing its original ship date, is now targeted for a 2011 release.

Representatives from both companies acknowledged that public safety concerns factored into the decision. They went on to say that even though Portal 2 will arrive slightly later than planned, all life on earth won’t instantaneously stop as every molecule in your body explodes at the speed of light, which is what would happen should a rip ever appear in the fabric of Valve Time.

“Also, the game will be even better,” they added, missing an historic opportunity to create the first product delay press release to mention that a product is being delayed to make it worse.

To ask questions about how close we all came to dying, or to ask futile questions about the previously announced E3 ***PORTAL-2-THEMED-FOR-GOD’S SAKE*** surprise or, less futilely, to schedule an appointment to attend a Portal 2 screening at the Valve booth during E3, please contact Valve’s delegate to the EU’s Valve Time Studies Group, Doug Lombardi.

Re:Eh...

[TheRaven64]

I, for one, have it on so that I can come here and complain.

Now get off my lawn!

Re:Noooooooooo

[drinkypoo]

Vega Strike is very much the new Elite. Unfortunately it has a fake economy, all planets of a certain type will always buy certain commodities at a profitable price, and so on. When polled more users said they wanted continuous flight down to a planet than a functioning economy, even though the latter is way more important for a game in which you can trade, so it's doomed to continue to be basically a glorified arcade game for the foreseeable future.

Re:Noooooooooo

[EllF]

X3 is great, but the best modern space sim I've played is an indie title (albeit, a very serious one by a dude who's been making space sims for over 10 years): Evochron Legends.

Obviously so they can focus effort on Linux

[rwa2]

Hopefully they're delaying Portal 2 so they can dedicate their best and brightest to port Steam and all their Source games over to Linux by the end of this summer:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_steam_announcement&num=1

I just sold my old gaming rig (Dual SMP Athlon XP-M + nVidia Geforce 6800GS), so if Valve pulls this off, I wouldn't need to buy a new Windows gaming machine to go alongside my Linux system (Dual core Athlon II + nVidia Geforce 8800GT), and would be happy to spend the money on new Steam games instead :-P

Yes, wistful thinking, I know :P

Re:Obviously so they can focus effort on Linux

[Fallingcow]

Or run Linux in VirtualBox.

If you don't use Linux for 3D stuff, it feels damn-near native on a modern machine. No more rebooting. Bonus: you don't have to install duplicate apps in both environments (like OpenOffice).

Re:So when my wife SMS'es me

[mobby_6kl]

I was always meaning to ask somebody about this situation. How do you keep your bear from destroying the basement? I can get mine to stay calm for a while, but eventually it gets pissed off and goes berserk on anything that happened to be in there. Once it even managed to get upstairs and ransack through the kitchen, eating everything I had prepared for dinner. Needless to say, it's a huge pain in the ass and I'm considering some drastic actions at this point, so any tips would be appreciated.
TIA

Re:Half-Life 3? ANDROID HELL!

[Pharmboy]

Damn, if I knew I was getting a wish granted, I would have wished for a stripper factory!