Valve opening Xbox 360 spigot

At the beginning of the 21st century, Valve Software showed tepid support for consoles. Development of the PlayStation 2 port of the studio's groundbreaking shooter Half-Life was outsourced to Gearbox Software, which shipped it in 2001. Two years later, Valve released a self-developed, tepidly reviewed, and essentially straight port of Counter-Strike for the Xbox, which enjoyed some success on Xbox Live.

However, the story changed with the Xbox version of Valve's award-winning and wildly popular Half-Life 2. Critics largely applauded the effort, criticizing only the game's lack of online play.

Today, Valve revealed that its next console game won't have that same shortcoming. The shop announced it is developing multiple games for the Xbox 360, and that all would support "integration with the Xbox Live online game service." The games will use a "customized version" of Valve's proprietary Source game engine.

While praising the platform, Valve CEO Gabe Newell was coy about the details of his company's Xbox 360 projects. He did, however, hint they may be outside Valve's traditional first-person shooter focus. "Whether developing a traditional FPS, RTS [real-time strategy game], RPG [role-playing game] or delving into new genres, the Xbox 360 is a great platform for expanding Source and our game experiences," he said in a statement.

Valve now joins the ranks of a growing legion of PC-centric developers announcing Xbox 360 support. Besides Epic Games, which is readying Gears of War for the console, Doom developer id Software has also announced it is working on an all-new Castle Wolfenstein game for the platform.