Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Wants to Blend Both 1.6 and Source Fanbases

The upcoming Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the new online first person shooter announced by Valve last month, will try to bring together the fiercely loyal fanbases of both Counter-Strike 1.6 as well as the newer Counter-Strike: Source, while offering a special kind of competitive experience to all of them.

Valve made quite a lot of its fans happy back in August, when it officially confirmed that a new Counter-Strike game is coming, in the form of Global Offensive, a multi-platform first person shooter with an emphasis on online battles that take place on some of the most iconic maps made for the franchise's previous iterations.

Now, as part of an in-depth article with Kotaku, Valve's Chet Faliszek confirmed that one of the key goals of Global Offensive is to bring together the two fanbases of Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike 1.6, two of the most recent titles in the series and the most popular up until now.

"A lot of Counter-strike: Global Offensive is taking Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike 1.6 and melding it into a product that every side likes and also expanding the base by putting it out on the consoles,” Faliszek revealed.

Project leader Igo Magal believes that Global Offensive takes the best of both titles but offers a distinctive, competitive experience, as opposed to the variety of mods that are now present for different kinds of Counter-Strike versions.

"Counter-Strike: GO has this kind of objective of homing in. We’re taking that competitive experience that’s very hard to organize in Counter-Strike: Source… We’ve taken that and let everyone experience the fun of a five-on-five where everyone is equally matched," he said. "The product doesn’t span all of Counter-Strike. Counter-Strike is zombie mods and all these different things. This is more narrow."

In terms of a full pledged sequel, Faliszek confirms that Valve has a different sort of strategy, saying that, "Counter-Strike 2, at least internally, we think about as something different."

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is scheduled to appear in early 2012 for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms.