Let me be the first to say that you are blind. You conveniently forget that some other game developers produce way better games in a shorter timespan and gives the player wonderful hours of it without charging the player exorbitant prices.

I wonder if it were another developer, would you say the same thing or start flaming them for it.

To me, it does seem to look like Valve is milking their cash cow for all that it's worth. They have spent quite a number of years building the new engine and putting in new technology in such as hi-def and such, so why can't they use what they have built and produce good content with a good amount of gameplay hours and make it in to a longer game rather than breaking it up in to episodes. They're saying that Half-Life 2 took 6 years to make, which I believe was due to the engine, physics and gameplay mechanics, not content.
Now that they already have the base to build the content, why aren't they using it to make a longer game in a shorter time ? Most of the features are already in place (Object Oriented anyone), so all they actually need to do is create the story, design the gameplay, create a bit of new art, make the plot, etc.

Well the answer is simple. They want more money for less work. It's simple as that, and they will keep doing it as long as people like you seem to agree with their methods.

Let me ask you this question, would you rather pay $20 for one episode (How many episodes are there going to be ?) or a full game for $49.99-59.99 ?

Looks to me to be some crap ass stupid shit announcement that has something to do with that POS Xbox360 X05 announcement.

Looks like I'm not the only one thinking this. See this article, which was written later from the post below ... ^_^
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12523

Cheers.

I am guessing here but let's see here...
ATI manufactures the graphics components for Nintendo.
AIT is going to manufacture the graphics componenets for Xbox.
IBM manufactures the CPU and architecture for Nintendo.
IBM manufactures the CPU and possibly some of the architecture for PS3.
IBM is going to manufacture the CPU and possibly the architecture for Xbox2.

Question : Does IBM have the rights to use PS3 technology and GameCube for other things, possibly another competitor Xbox2 ?

Possible Outcome : IBM uses all these great technology or some amalgamation of these technology as well as their fabrication processes to manufacture a POWERPC processor for the Xbox2, which is not backward compatible to Xbox, thus informing the users that if they want to play new games, they will have to buy the new platform. Users being as they are will probably buy new platform to get the latest games, thus filling Microsoft's coffers.
Microsoft probably will buy over one of its competitors to get the games from that platform on to its own (read N...o).
Microsoft will probably sell a emulation kit with the latest Xbox2 to allow the playing of Xbox games on the new platform, ie. x86 on Apple via a daughter card ?

Microsoft's plan to segregate the PC platform for business and the Xbox platform for games will use its clout in the industry to get all Computer Games companies to move to the new platform, eliminating one major source of headache for them which is to support performance ie. games on Windows platform.
Microsoft will revamp their whole windows platform to fight against Linux by eliminating unneeded stuff such as directX, audio, video, etc. which will move to Xbox2.

Anything else ???
Though this whole thing may hinge on the fact of licensing of the technologies.
Just my 0.01 cents worth of thought. Any constructive thoughts ???

Blizzard has always had about two development teams, where both will be working on different projects.
Since now, Blizzard South is working on WoW for the PC, obviously Blizzard North is working on some game.
Blizzard probably thinks that WoW will sustain the PC market for a while. Their previous records that games are released roughly about two years gap.

Since WoW is coming out soon for the PC market, don't expect any new games from them for the PC platform for another 2 years.

They should have just got a new development team to create the console game instead of using one of their elite teams.

Furthermore, they should have just said before hand that the new game being announced was going to be a console game, then we PC gamers wouldn't have been hit as hard.

This is my view on things