Valve promising three 'surprises' within next 12 months

Valve dropped a sizable bombshell during the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo, when former PlayStation 3 critic Gabe Newell announced that Portal 2 would ship for Sony's console in addition to versions for the Xbox 360, PC, and Mac. What's more, Newell crowned the PS3 version of Portal 2 "the best console version of the game," due to its inclusion of Steamworks, which allows for auto-updates, downloadable content, and community support directly from Valve.

As it turns out, Portal 2's presence on the PS3 apparently won't be the only bit of shocking news from Valve in the near future. In an interview with PC Gamer magazine (and relayed by sister site CVG), Newell promised that his studio is planning to make three more surprising announcements over the coming year.

"We have three pretty big surprises in the next 12 months at least," Newell told the magazine. "I can guarantee you people are going to be surprised at stuff we do. That isn't going to stop anytime soon. I'm just laughing because…people will be shocked again."

One of those surprises may be Valve's involvement with Defense of the Ancients, a tower-defense-style game that began life as a map mod for Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft III. Last month, prominent voice actor John St. John posted to his Twitter feed that he had traveled to Valve's studio in Washington to record for DOTA. Shortly thereafter, Valve filed an application to trademark the phrase "DOTA" for use in games with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Another (arguably) surprising announcement would be that for Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Initially planned as a rapid-fire episodic series, Valve's Half-Life 2 expansions quickly took on a life of their own following the release of Episode 1 in June 2006. Episode 2 arrived more than a year after the first release in the series, coming bundled with Team Fortress 2 and Portal as part of The Orange Box in November 2007. Valve has not offered a time frame for the release of Episode 3.