With a game as stupidly popular and successful as Counter-Strike, the question is not 'Will there be a sequel?' but rather: 'When?'

Valve Software, the developer housed in a red building entirely comprised of $50 bills (it could happen), knows this too: "We will never abandon Counter-Strike," marketing man Doug Lombardi told Shack News, explaining why the online shooter hasn't received a major update since the release of Counter-Strike Source.

"It's a little bit unfair to compare Counter-Strike, I think, to your classic game that's gonna have these sequels. It looks a little bit more like an MMO where it's constantly [being updated]."

But Lombardi did reveal that the developer is at least thinking about how they'd approach a sequel:

"With Counter-Strike 2," he said, "there's a big question between, do we go start over from scratch and build this whole new game, do we do something that looks more like Team Fortress 2 that is rooted in the old game but has a ton of new stuff, or do we just sort of take everything that's new that we've released and put that out in a new box." We'd go for the middle one.

"I think we're leaning more towards the two more radical places than just sort of rolling up the new box and reskinning the box and putting out all the new stuff."

The Valve team also recently confirmed (by accident) that a second Portal game is in the works (and Lombardi has since officially stated that "more Portal is coming"), so combined with the Counter-Strike sequel and Half-Life 2: Episode Three, could we be looking at the early stages of what might be an Orange Box Two?

"I just don't think that [Counter-Strike 2] would be a good fit [with a second Orange Box]," piped in Valve overlord Gabe Newell, noting that CS2 would be a stand-alone game to him.

"But if I get 15,000 emails from customers in response to this interview telling me 'Of course it should be in [the next Orange Box],' then of course we'll pay attention to that."

Here's hoping.

Courtesy of CVG.

Mar 3, 2008