Last night it became known that two of Valve’s iconic games – Half-Life 2 and Portal – have become available for download from the Google Play app store. However, not everyone will be able to download them.
The opportunity to play portable versions of blockbusters from a decade ago (Half-Life 2 was released in 2004, Portal three years later) was given only to owners of the SHIELD portable console, released by Nvidia to the market last summer. So, if you don’t have this Android set-top box, then it’s too early to rejoice at the release.
On the other hand, it is unlikely that Valve ported projects for Android in order to launch only on SHIELD, whose sales are unlikely to have crossed even the one hundred thousandth threshold (quite good figures for a status device). It is possible that after a while the games will become available to owners of all devices based on Tegra 4, and then to a wider range of users.
The latter, however, is nothing more than fortune-telling on coffee grounds. Something else is obvious: Valve has taken a close look at the mobile version of Source. Yes, back in late 2012 Gabe Newell stated that they were working on Dota 2 for tablets (the original game was developed just on Source), but then he noted that the time had not yet come. Apparently, times have changed.
A source: http://blogs.nvidia.com