Valve, in all their awesomeness, has been trying to release all new TF2 content to the consoles free of charge, unfortunately Microsoft doesn’t feel the same way. Valve Founder, Gabe Newell says the console gaming model is getting in the way. “The big concern I have right now is our ability to provide updates. On the PC side, we’ve done as many as four updates in a day, and that’s great: we can respond very quickly.” says Newell at GC08 to videogaming247.

If Nvidia puts out a new graphics driver and it changes some way about how texture management works, then before our customers know there’s any issue then the problem has gone away. Or we can do the Pyro updates, and the Medic updates [and so on].
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The guys over at Valve have been working on a new art style theme for Team Fortress 2. The new theme is leaning towards cooler colors and is based on an Alpine theme. It certainly is refreshing.

We decided to create a new TF environment after sensing some desert-fatigue, both internally and externally. The new theme had to be a departure from the current look without being so different that the characters felt out of place in it. We also wanted to leverage some content from our existing environments, since crafting every asset from scratch would mean we’d be moving the release beyond Valve time and into the realm of geologic time. Given these goals and constraints, we settled on the Alpine theme for two reasons: Its green foliage and blue-gray rocks let us introduce a new, cooler color palette to the game, and the lumber mill / mining camp buildings fit our existing set of structures. For Arena Lumberyard, the goal was to establish a clear difference between the two sides of the map. One side climbs up toward a large mountain peak, and the other dips down into a vast valley. We’re excited to have a new visual theme to play with, and we’ll definitely be using it in future maps.

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