Penny Arcade takes a tour of Valve Software and Interviews Gabe Newell

The folks at Penny Arcade have launcheed their own news site, The Penny Arcade Report last week. For their first feature, they’ve taken a tour of Valve Software’s offices in Redmond and interviewed CEO Gabe Newell on the company’s culture and its plans for the future. One bombshell from the interview is Valve’s plans to foray into selling it’s own hardware and console systems.

Well, if we have to sell hardware we will. We have no reason to believe we’re any good at it, it’s more we think that we need to continue to have innovation and if the only way to get these kind of projects started is by us going and developing and selling the hardware directly then that’s what we’ll do. It’s definitely not the first thought that crosses our mind; we’d rather hardware people that are good at manufacturing and distributing hardware do that. We think it’s important enough that if that’s what we end up having to do then that’s what we end up having to do. -Gabe Newell

 

Check out the interview and the tour at penny-arcade.com/report

Fan Expo Vancouver Tickets On Sale Today

Tickets for Fan Expo Vancouver are finally on sale on the Fan Expo Website. Prices are $33 for the Deluxe Pass, $22 for the Standard Adult Pass, and $12 for children. The Convention is still going on April 21-22 at the Vancouver Trade and Convention Center with Celebrity Guests such as Adam West, Burt Ward, Tom Felton, Kevin Sorbo, and Lou Ferrigno.

Source: www.fanexpovancouver.com

Xbox 360 Indie Games Get More Visible With Dashboard Update

Xbox just updated their dashboard software to ensure that their indie games would still have a place in front of the eyes of gamers. The dashboard’s last update in November had the indie games hidden behind a separate game type. However, the new dashboard update is only being rolled out in North America, and critics like Tim Schafer have mentioned that it may be to late for XBLA as a platform for indie games. Other services like Steam, the Apple App Store, and the Android Marketplace have stepped in to fill the void with superior patching capabilities more transparent approval processes.

Source:Eurogamer.net.