An interview with two of Valve's top dogs, Chet Faliszek and Ido Magal, have spoken to Kotaku.com about their thoughts on what they hope to achieve with the release of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

During the interview the two confirm that it isn't CS2 but imply that one might be coming, although it will be different to previous iterations of the game.

Alarmingly for e-sports enthusiasts is their take on CS:GO. Not only do they say that they are not bothered about whether or not CS:GO takes as an e-sports title, they also speak about the title as being a potentially unifying one between the two existing communities of CS:S and CS 1.6 despite their commitment to fixing CS:S.

An extract from the article reads:

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.

Valve is not trying to necessarily turn GO into an e-Sport. "That requirement doesn't exist," Magal said. "If it happens, that's nice." They do want to make sure those highest-level players can enjoy GO, though, so Valve is launching a PC beta for the game in October and having what Magal calls an ongoing "dialogue" with hardcore CS players "to fix the things that everyone agrees is an issue." For example: "The way the smoke grenades used to work in Counter-Strike: Source. We changed the rate at which it blooms and dissipates and everyone preferred it." And another example, also from Magal: "The maps Dust and Aztec aren't played competitively at all because they were so imbalanced in Source. We feel very bullish on changing them, so we did. Dust 2 is a wonderfully balanced map that we didn't need to change. We just gave it a visual upgrade."

Read the full article at Kotaku.com.