interview about counter strike on xbox
Microsoft is making a bid for the online gaming market with its upcoming Xbox Live service but it knows that all their effort will be for naught without good games that use the service. At Monday’s pre-E3 press conference, Microsoft announced a number of games that will be developed for Xbox Live and one of them will be Valve Software’s Counter-Strike, currently the most popular online multiplayer first person shooter with tens of thousands of players on thousands of servers at any one time. Valve Software’s head man Gabe Newell was in the audience at the Xbox press event and HomeLAN got a chance to chat briefly with him about Counter-Strike for the Xbox:
HomeLAN - First, how did the idea of bringing Counter-Strike to the Xbox come about? Did you approach Microsoft or did Microsoft approach you?
Gabe Newell - Well, we have been talking with the guys who have been developing the Xbox for a long time now. When you look at the Xbox and you look at the hardware that is there, the fact that it is always connected, the fact that it is a broadband connection , the fact that it has a hard drive were all things that we were looking for in the right platform to deliver Counter-Strike. So really ever since they started building the Xbox we have been thinking about the best way to take advantage of it and Counter-Strike will be the first thing we try to really exploit the capabilities of Xbox.
HomeLAN - What kind of content can we expect from this version of Counter-Strike? Will it be just a direct port or will there be new content exclusive for the Xbox version?
Gabe Newell - There is going to be new content exclusive to the Xbox. The starting point is going to be Condition Zero (the upcoming single player oriented game that’s being developed by Gearbox Software) but we are also trying to figure out how to take advantage of a couple of the characteristics of the Xbox. The fact that you have a NV-25 in the graphics, that you can guarantee that all of your customers have that, the fact that you can guarantee that everybody have a broadband connection, the fact that everybody has a controller with more flexibility in a lot of ways than a keyboard….we are going to rethink some stuff and look for opportunities to really take advantage of those. It’s just an opportunity to move Counter-Strike forward that we really wouldn’t have in a PC environment.
HomeLAN -Who is creating the Xbox version of Counter-Strike? Is it you guys? Is it Gearbox?
Gabe Newell - Gearbox and Valve are working together on this. We both have the technology we want to develop and some lessons we want to learn by getting Counter-Strike running on the Xbox. So it’s another collaboration between the two companies.
HomeLAN - How far along are you guys in the development of the game?
Gabe Newell - In terms of getting the game up and running we are pretty far along. The thing that I’m struggling with and Randy (Pitchford) is struggling with is how we can really take advantage of the Xbox. There are doors that are opened by it and we want to make sure…you know, Counter-Strike is the premiere action game and here is this hardware that gives us this level of standard hardware that we have never had before and we want to make sure we continue to maintain that premiere position.
HomeLAN - When do you think it will be completed?
Gabe Newell - I just can’t give dates. I can guarantee quality. We try to build games that are great but we are completely incompetent at actually guessing when we are going to ship anything.
HomeLAN - Lastly, what do you think of the Xbox Live service? There has been some criticism, from Electronic Arts primarily, that they don’t like the fact that it is a closed system.
Gabe Newell - I think Xbox Live is great. I think it solves a lot of problems for the developer. I think it lets you focus on building your game. There are just a lot of problems that go away when you are running on an Xbox environment. For developers it’s a great system. I know that there are some political issues that EA is working out with Microsoft but I really don’t think that they are related to either what developers have to build on or how customers are going to have the experience. It’s really sort of irrelevant to those two.
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