Valve Software announced today that a version of the Half-Life 2 engine dubbed "Source" was to be made available as a middleware solution for developers on the Xbox 360. Currently the gaming world is in what I like to call "Epic mode" since every other day we hear of the Unreal Engine 3 technology being licensed for some other game. Same goes for the Doom 3 engine, though obviously not so much. Now we have the Source engine being throw to developers to use as a middleware solution, which means we should see many new games on the Xbox 360 (and presumably the PC platform as a result) taking advantage of the Source engine itself.
For those of you who don"t know, I"m talking to the three of you here who don"t know, Half-Life 2 Episode 2 will be released on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 during the first quarter of 2007. Along with Episode 2 comes Portal and Team Fortress 2, two new games that many PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 users can"t wait to play. There is no mention whether or not a similar middleware solution will be made available to PS3 developers, though it is probably a safe bet that somewhere down the road it will.