Tag Archives: the orange box

RPS has noted that Valve has made its games available on GameStop download service Impulse. The marketplace, which was owned by Stardock up until last year when it was bought by GameStop, now has five titles from the company: Portal 2, The Half-Life Complete Collection, Left 4 Dead 1 + 2 and The Orange Box, all of which end up requiring Steam activation anyways. Still, your options on where to buy Valve games has become more broader now.

More details here.

Gabe Newell would like you to know that he is not a man who has gone back on his word, even despite his apparent backflip on the topic of PlayStation 3 development. Instead, he’s just another vote in a democracy, and the tribe has spoken.

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EA Partners boss David DeMartini has said that the development of the PS3 port of The Orange Box was a “challenge situation”.

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Amazon’s offering a third game free when you buy two Platinum Hits for Xbox 360, provided it’s an equal or lesser price then the two you’ve already picked.

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Valve has The Orange Box on sale this weekend for $9.99.

Never bought it? Now’s your chance.

After the sale is over it goes back up to $29.99.

Head on over to Steam.

Folks who play the Orange Box via Steam will get an engine update next time they log in.

The specific changes include:

• Updated the engine to report SteamIDs using the Steam_0 format instead of Steam_1
• Fixed problems in Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and Source mods running the current Orange Box engine
• Reverted the change that capped rate at 30,000

For more information hit the link.

Speaking to VGChartz, Valve’s Doug Lombardi has said that Left 4 Dead pre-orders are trouncing those taken by The Orange Box.

“Pre-orders for Left 4 Dead are currently exceeding Orange Box pre-orders by well over 40 percent, this driven largely by the 10 percent off promotion being offered now for both versions,” he said.

“And one could assume this trend over Orange will continue as the pre-launch demo hits and the largest consumer advertising campaign for any Valve game begins on buses, buildings, billboards, TV, magazines, and web sites in the next couple weeks.”

More through there. The multiplay shooter’s out for 360 and PC in November.

Here. If you recall, the PS3 version of the Orange Box was patched yesterday, but no one seemed to know why. Case closed.

• Fixed a graphical issue whereby a player would have the explosion effect left on the end of their Rocket Launcher when attempting to Rocket Jump.
• Fixed a memory leak to improve single player stability.
• Fixed an issue whereby the players name would not appear on the Stats comparison screen.
• We have fixed an issue that would cause the vote tallies to disappear when you viewed the scoreboard between rounds.
• Fixed an online server issue.
• Fixed an issue that caused a crash when a player that wasn’t in Division 1 entered ‘Your Leaderboards.
• Fixed an issue with players not always being added to the ‘Players Met’ menu on the XMB.
• Fixed a bug where a player viewing a friend without an EA account would have an empty entry in the friend’s Leaderboard.
• Fixed an issue where it was not possible to connect to the EA servers if you had more than 30 friends.

Here. The patch has been released without announcement and no one seems to know what it does, but it’s there nonetheless. Story of the Day award so far.

Valve’s confirmed that the Orange Box separates will release in the UK and rest of Europe, despite the fact EA had said previously there was “no confirmation” of plans to bring the games to the UK.

“Yes they will,” Valve’s Doug Lombardi told videogaming247 when asked if the split-out games would be made available at UK retail. “EA is the distributor for most of the EU.”

While the games have not been priced for Europe as yet, Portal and Team Fortress 2 will be sold in the US for $19.99 and $29.99, respectively. The Half-Life 2 Episode Pack, which will include both Episode One and Two in addition to Half-Life 2 Deathmatch for online play, makes up the rest of the deal and has been priced at $29.99.

Americans will be able to buy the games on April 9, while Europeans will see them two days later on April 11. And before you ask, the 360 Box definitely isn’t being split out.

“PC only,” Lombardi added.

From here:

Portal and Team Fortress 2, which had previously not been available individually at retail outlets, will be sold for $19.99 and $29.99, respectively. Valve is also planning the Half-Life 2 Episode Pack, which will include both Episode One and Two in addition to Half-Life 2 Deathmatch for online play, priced at $29.99.

According to that report, the games gone on sale on April 9, as previously reported, and worldwide on April 11. We’re still unsure whether or not this stuff’s going on sale in the UK: EA claims it’s having nothing to do with it over here.

EA has just told videogaming247 that there are currently no release plans for the the separate elements of the Orange Box at UK retail.

“There is no confirmation on UK plans for releasing individual elements of The Orange Box at retail,” said an EA UK spokesperson. “Obviously, you can already download individual elements via Steam, and they have announced in the US that they will be available at retail in April.”

It was confirmed overnight that the package’s elements – HL2, Ep 1, Ep 2, Portal and TF2 – would be made available at US retail on April 9. The plan was first confirmed during an EA financial release at the end of the January.

According to this, Valve’s Doug Lombardi has confirmed that console versions of the Orange Box have sold over 1.5 million copies to date, with PC sales of the multi-game title coming in as “significantly stronger”.

“I think the Xbox 360 version did just over a million, while the PS3 [released later in December] version did a few hundred thousand copies,” he said. “So I think when all is said and done, The Orange Box will have sold about 1.5 million copies on the console, which is great. But the game’s PC sales were much stronger… at least a two-digit percentage increase over the console sales. And that includes Steam sales, retail sales, and now individual sales of Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2. So when you take the PC numbers for The Orange Box a la carte, they’re significantly higher.”

GDC was a busy time for Valve, having seemingly confirmed Portal 2, explained why Left 4 Dead won’t be coming to PS3 and hinted that Wii development may be a possibility.