No new Portal in 2008, says Valve

Valve's Doug Lombardi has told our sister site, Eurogamer.net that there won't be a new Portal game this year.

"In typical Valve tradition, it won't be Portal with different colours," he said Lombardi.

"I think that when you hit something like that, you have two choices: you can quickly replicate it and stick it out there - do the opportunistic thing and cash in on it - or you can do the crazy thing like we did after Half-Life was so successful and go off and try and say, 'Okay, that was revolutionary, so its successor has to be equally as revolutionary.'"

For that reason, consumers won't see a new Portal at retail this Christmas. Even though Lombardi notes that people want more, Valve doesn't want to give them more of the same right away because "that would just be boring."

The original game - described as an "experiment" - won critical acclaim when released last October as part of The Orange Box compilation. Valve is currently doing plenty of research and development to find out what it is going to offer in terms of a follow-up.

"I think you have to be ambitious," Lombardi said.

"For us, that's really paid off. Half-Life 2 was the right decision, it was painful, six years and upwards of 40 million dollars to develop, but that paid off. That's our recipe."