Does anyone else find weird how many official Portal projects came out in 2022?
Just last year, we got 3 official Portal projects:
Aperture Desk Job
Companion Collection
Portal with RTX
Of course, Aperture Desk Job is just a tech demo, it's not like haven't done this before (The Lab and Aperture Hand Lab), but it feels like they put a lot more effort into this tech demo than their other ones. They got a whole team to make it, including the original Portal writers, and they even got JK Simmons to reprise his role as Cave Johnson (keep in mind JK Simmons is a relatively big name, and it probably wasn't that cheap to get him on the project). They made Desk Job something that can be enjoyed beyond it's purpose of just being a tech demo, even though it's a free game and the most they got out of it was a bit of advertising for the Steam Deck (which is not mentioned at all in the game).
Then there's the Companion Collection, which is the first Valve console port in 10 years (last one was I believe CSGO for ps3 and xbox 360). Now this project was developed mostly by Nvidia Lightspeed studios, which also made the Android port of Portal, but I have reason to believe it was originally Valve's idea, and they just reached out to Nvidia to make the port, because if it was orginally envisioned by Nvidia, they probably would have plastered their name all over it like they did with Portal RTX, but they didn't do that (also note that most game ports are not produced in-house, it's pretty common practice to outsource them). I could also just be completely wrong about that theory, but who knows.
And finally there's Portal with RTX. This was definitely Nvidias idea, and Valve just officially sanctioned it. There's not much to say about it. As I mentioned before it was just used as an advertisement for Nvidia's products and technology, and Valve had little to no involvement in it. Whatever.
Now, does anyone else find it weird how all of this was in one year? I feel like they wanted to maybe spark new interest in the Portal series, but why now? The only indication that Valve has a Portal-related project in the works is that one leak that came out of Aperture Desk Job involving a recreating of the Portal paint game, but other than that there's no information. Maybe it could just be a coincidence, but who knows.
What do you guys think? Am I crazy? Am I onto something? Do I suffer from undiagnosed schizophrenia? I am desperate.