This doesn't really explain Valve's problem at all to be honest (or Square's but that's another topic entirely). Yeah, Valve tends to have fairly long development cycles, though interestingly, they've been managing to change that if the time between each iteration of Portal and L4D didn't make that obvious. Hell, they've had four separate releases since 2007 (one of them including 3 new games), with two more games coming out next year. More to the point though, they don't really have multiple dev teams either. People there really just choose to work on anything that they think they can contribute to and add value in. The people there literally have the freedom to just work on projects they're fired up about.fates_puppet13 said:
But really, I think what this whole thing comes down to (or at least it should) is that if the only problem Valve really has is that they have the financial freedom and the drive to take as much time as needed to make games that don't suck, then there isn't really a problem at all.
Couldn't disagree more with your statements honestly. We're not talking about someone working on some project with a set deadline where if they don't meet it contracts fall through, sales disappear and companies go bankrupt. Valve chooses to take as long as it takes not to spit on their fans, but to respect them by giving them games they feel are worth buying.Trivea said:
And if you haven't noticed, Valve are not only not a small time company (easily the largest independent developer I know of with a lot of critically acclaimed and well loved titles, not to mention a dedicated fan base), but they haven't missed a release date by much in a long time. To my recollection, the last time it happened was Portal 2 getting pushed back a few months, and they announced that happening several months before the original planned release date.
