A potential good purchase -- The House that Half-Life Built is open to an outright acquisition.
Doug Lombardi, Valve’s outspoken and respected VP, recently had an interview with Gamasutra stating the developer’s openness to an acquisition.
Microsoft should consider the prospect of a purchase to complement their lacking and somewhat empty first party line up of development houses. Unlike Take2 wherein the bulk of their sales have always been a multi platform affair, Valve's portfolio shows a strong leaning to the PC, a platform which Microsoft largely owns through their venerable Windows OS platform.
They’ll have the rights to franchises and IPs that would benefit their overall first party offering for both PC and Xbox platforms. Exclusively timed releases would massively benefit the 360 brand and still cater to Valve's PC following -- releasing titles in a ‘timely fashion’ on two platforms essentially on two different competitive spaces.
Microsoft has to step up in strengthening their first party exclusives -- Sony’s leaning to that strategy, it’d be in Microsoft’s best interest that they strengthen theirs since their embarrassing loss of superstar development houses the likes of Bizarre, Bioware and Bungie last year.
