"Nobody asked for" is an unproductive meme that gets parroted all too often. No one asked for Half-Life or Portal or DotA or even MtG either.
Portal was actually a similar thing. It started as a student game called Narbacular Drop. Valve hired that team, who turned the concept into Portal.
Likewise they hired Icefrog from DotA to work on DotA 2.
That's a good strategy.