‘Half Life 3’ Release Date To Match Virtual Reality Helmets Like HTC Vive Or Oculus Rift?


Rumors of an impending announcement of a Half Life 3 release date were jump-started once again when HTC chairwoman Cher Wang claimed they were “cooperating with Half Life” in the development of their virtual reality helmet called the HTC Vive. But did Wang misspeak or did she actually reveal Valve’s little secret?

In a related report by the Inquisitr, Counter-Strike co-creator Minh Le once claimed to have potentially seen early development Half Life 3 concept art. A recent Steam update also accidentally released a mysterious “App 323900,” which came sporting a Half Life 3 logo. But when gamers noticed the oddity Valve quickly deleted it.

Whether it be called Half Life 3 or Half Life 2: Episode 3, to this day there continues to a large amount of interest on any rumors that point to the future release date. After all, Valve has essentially left the world hanging since Episode 2 was released almost 10 years ago back in 2007. Since virtual reality is steadily becoming more viable for the average gamer, there’s also a lot of interest in combining the two.

“Steam has a community of 125 million gamers,” said Nick Parker, a video games industry analyst at Parker Consulting. “All of them are very familiar with Half-Life, a significant number have played it, and some are still playing it. People won’t buy the headset without a good catalogue of games, and there’s certainly an engagement loyalty with the Half-Life brand.”

In the past, Valve released a special Half Life 2 Oculus Rift version that allowed full virtual reality support. Since Valve is helping co-develop the HTC Vive, it made sense for BBC to ask whether Half Life 3 was in the works for the VR helmet. So when Wang claimed HL3 was indeed in the works, this was quite the surprise.

“I think Valve’s best game is Dota, right, and Portal and [Team Fortress] and I think they are very keen to have them…. We are co-operating with Half-life, and I think… I hope, you know, it will be on it.”

Supposedly, Valve was even more surprised by this statement, and now Cher Wang says she simply made an error.

“Regarding my BBC interview with Dave Lee yesterday, I would like to apologise for any confusion caused when I referred to individual games titles,” she said according to BBC. “In response to a question on specific games, I misspoke when I referred to our working together with Valve on a particular game, when instead I meant our collaboration with Valve on developing next-generation virtual reality experiences for gaming. I am very excited about the work we are doing with Valve, and look forward to bringing our HTC Vive to market later this year.”

Do you think she misspoke or did gamers just receive yet another hint at an impending Half Life 3 release date announcement?

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