Pro gamers and invited guests will make it onto the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive closed beta early in October. Valve’s Chet Faliszeck told The Reticule that they’re planning to grow the beta in the coming months, and he hopes everyone will have a chance to play by the end of the year.

Counter-Strike pros have already had a chance to go hands on with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive when they were invited to Valve HQ for testing earlier this year. A Counter-Strike: Global Offensive hands-on account from one of those testers uncovered new weapons like the molotov cocktail, and a tweaked and updated version of the Counter-Strike classic, de_dust.

The first Counter-Strike: Global Offensive trailer revealed more, including support for cross platform play with Mac and Playstation 3 gamers, and officially supported servers that will offer improved matchmaking and a ranking system.

Most recently, Valve announced that they have been working with the modders who created the original Gun Game mod, and will bring it to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with new modes and eight new map

The next Counter-Strike, the one coming out early next year called Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, won't be called Counter-Strike 2, because that game would be "something different", two of Valve's top people on the new game recently told Kotaku.

"A lot of Counter-Strike: GO 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," Valve's Chet Faliszek said, referring to the two most popular incarnations of the game. "Whereas Counter-Strike 2, at least internally, we think about as something different."
During a recent interview at Valve headquarters in Bellevue, Faliszek and CS: GO project lead Ido Magal let me play Counter-Strike: GO (for an hour) and then helped me narrow in on what the new game is and isn't.

It's clear that the new game, which will be released as a downloadable title for PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 early next year, isn't a full-fledged sequel.

"Counter-Strike: GO has this kind of objective of homing in," Magal said. "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 [game] where everyone is equally matched. The product doesn't span all of Counter-Strike. Counter-Strike is zombie mods and all these different things. This is more narrow."

The new GO will feature several classic maps, new weapons and tweaks that range from modified maps to a new casual mode that removes the in-game money restrictions on which weapons and items players can buy. It also will be supported by Valve's in-house match-making, an option that allows Valve to promise a controlled, predictable multiplayer experience for all gamers.

GO is being developed in concert with Hidden Path Entertainment, which is located just a couple of blocks from Valve HQ. That team was initially been assigned to work on a straight Xbox Live Arcade port of 2004's Counter-Strike: Source.

"We wanted to see what that would look like," Magal said. It looked good.

"We realized there was something more there that we could do, something that the community would be interested in," Faliszek said.

"And we got excited," Magal added.

Valve had expected the 2004 Source version of the game to replace the previous year's 1.6 iteration, itself a successor to a game that had been evolving since the late 90's. But many of 1.6's most ardent fans, including those who played it competitively, as a sport, resisted the Source version. Source "didn't do what we thought it would do, but we weren't disappointed about what it did," Magal said. "We thought Counter-Strike: Source would replaced Counter-Strike 1.6 but instead it generated a community just as large as the 1.6 community on its own."

Faliszek called it "an amoeba-like split."

GO is supposed to bring those crowds together and rope in console players who have only had an original Xbox version to choose from. Valve also assumes it has lost some computer Counter-Strike gamers who have moved away from PC gaming and wants to reach them on the consoles those gamers may have moved to (fittingly, the PS3 version of the game will even include mouse and keyboard support; and all players on PS3/PC/Mac will be match-made against each other.)

The Valve guys describe two of the goals for GO as lowering the skill floor—making it easier for newbies to have fun with game, hence the casual mode—and raising the skill ceiling—making meaningful, subtle changes to maps and mechanics that only pro-level players will notice and appreciate.

-read more @ http://kotaku.com/5839298/what-the-new-counter+strike-is-and-isnt-according-to-valve