Doug Lombardi, in a brand-new interview with CVG, discusses the future of Valve and what the consumer can expect from the company. Just what is the deal with Episode 3, Portal 2, Left 4 Dead, and the Wii? Also, what is it that stops Valve from upping their graphics engine to Crysis levels?

It's really a conscious decision, on our behalf, to make sure that our games work across a wide range of systems. And I think that we're investing more in the gameplay, AI and design than were are in textures and rendering.

If we wanted to we could beef up Source so that it'd not run on an older PC anymore, but that really wouldn't be a good decision.

That may work within the industry, and it may impress some people at trade shows, but I think when you get that out to Joe-Average, who has a two-year old PC and doesn't have £2000 to buy the latest hardware to run a game, it's not so good. We don't want that disconnection.

Portal was named Game of the Year by over 30 publications. It wasn't the prettiest game that came out last year, but a lot of people thought it was the best. And we feel far more gratified by that than winning the Prettiest Game of the Year award.

As for Episode 3, mum is the word. Lombardi was also very non-committal that we'll see Portal 2 at some point in 2009.