the-orange-box posts

It's pretty clear that Call of Duty Black Ops is going to be one of the best selling PC games of the year, at least if the Treyarch developed first person shooter position on Steam's top 10 weekly best selling game list is to be believed. The game remained at the top of the list for the past week and has not relinquished that spot since it was released last month.

In the number two spot is Valve's The Orange Box collection as a remnant of the Thanksgiving sale, followed by Battlefield Bad Company 2 Vietnam, the upcoming expansion pack to the hit EA first person shooter, as it makes its debut in the number three spot. The full top 10 list is as follows:

1. Call of Duty Black Ops - Treyarch/Activision
2. The Orange Box - Valve
3. Battlefield Bad Company 2 Vietnam - DICE/EA
4. Metro 2022 - 4A Games/THQ
5. Left 4 Dead 2 - Valve
6. Civilization V - Firaxis Games
7. Super Meat Boy - Team Meat
8. Dirt 2 - Codemasters
9. Aliens Vs Predator - Rebellion/Sega
10. Battlefield Bad Company 2 - DICE/EA

When Valve first announced plans to release Portal 2 earlier this year the developer didn't name a publisher for the game. And it still hasn't even though the puzzle-shooter sequel now has a set release date of February 9, 2011. While the company has worked in the recent past with Electronic Arts on its last three game releases (The Orange Box and the two Left 4 Dead games), it's not yet certain that EA will publish Portal 2.

Eurogamer quotes EA Partners head David DeMartini as saying, "I don't have anything signed in blood yet. I'm certainly working on it. They're a great partner and just a great studio." Even though there's no deal in place DeMartini seems confident that EA will gain the Portal 2 publishing rights, saying, "We're in the process of earning their business yet again for Portal 2, and we're very optimistic because of our close relationship. We do a lot of business on Steam. They do a lot of business with us on the distribution side." Still it wouldn't be the first time Valve has jumped to another publisher. It first worked with Vivendi Games on the original Half-Life, Counter-Strike and Half-Life 2. It even worked with Activision on a retail release of Day of Defeat.

This week's list of the top 10 best selling PC games on the Steam service (according to revenue) is full of games that have been on sale. The top two games this week are Valve's 2007 game collection The Orange Box and Relic's RTS game Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II Gold Edition, both of which had big temporary price cuts this week.

In fact six of the games in this week's top 10 were put there due to temporary sales. The full list is below:

1. The Orange Box - Valve
2. Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II Gold Edition - Relic/THQ
3. Battlefield Bad Company 2 - Digital Illusions/EA
4. Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package - Infinity Ward/Activision
5. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Elite Echelon Edition - Ubisoft
6. Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II Chaos Rising - Relic/THQ
7. Modern Warfare 2 - Infinity Ward/Activision
8. Half-Life 2 - Valve
9. APB All Points Bulletin - Real Time Worlds/EA
10. Killing Floor - Tripwire Interactive

It's been well over two years since the release of The Orange Box and as a consequence the release of Valve's Half-Life 2 Episode 2. The second of three announced episodic continuations of Valve's first person shooter was packaged in The Orange Box but since its release Valve has not talked at all about the status of the third and final chapter in the trilogy.

Now Cinema Blend is reporting that the new print issue of Game Informer magazine claims there will not be any new Half-Life game released in 2010. That means it will be at least three years, if not more, before we might learn what happens to Gordon Freeman. Last June, Valve head man Gabe Newell claimed there were good reasons for not talking about their plans for Episode 3 yet. Hopefully we will learn those reasons soon.

In 2007, Valve released The Orange Box collection for both the PC and Xbox 360. Xbox 360 owners, however, actually got a version of the original Half-Life 2 in their port of The Orange Box that is graphically better than the current PC version. That's because Valve decided to give the Xbox 360 port all of the updates they had made to the Source Engine since Half-Life 2 was released for the PC back in 2004, including support for HDR lighting and improved character models.

While Valve doesn't seem in a hurry to give PC owners those kind of updates, a group of modders have taken it on themselves to bring the original Half-Life 2 up to speed with the graphical updates that were put into Half-Life 2 Episode 2 (released in The Orange Box). They even hacked in some new Steam achievements. You can see the differences in the YouTube video above. It's currently unknown how Valve feels about this kind of modification but if you want to try it out this Steam message board thread has some download links for the mod.

[Via Rock Paper Shotgun]

Yep, it's time for yet another Steam sales post. Their ongoing holiday sale still has six days to go but today their one-day sale has some super low prices on five games. In fact all but one of them are priced below $10 each. The one exception is The Orange Box. Valve's collection of all the current Half-Life 2 games plus Team Fortress 2 and Portal is now just $14.99.

The other games on sale for the next 23 hours are Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box for $7.49, Killing Floor and Space Siege for $4.99 each and Prey for a mere $2.25.

It took much longer than previously announced but today Valve revealed that they have added support via Steam for the Novint Falcon PC game controller to all of the games in Valve's Orange Box collection. That includes Half-Life 2: Episodes 1 and 2 along with Portal and Team Fortress 2 (the original Half-Life 2 already supports the Falcon controller via a patch from Novint).

The controller allows gamers to "feel" effects like weapon fire recoil, the weight of holding objects like barrels and even feel textures in the game world. Valve has promised that they will add Falcon support to their other games including Left 4 Dead.

Valve Software has put their own games on sale this weekend as part of their regular weekly price cuts on Steam. This time the developer has put their Orange Box collection of games for sale for a nice reduction in price.

Just in case you haven't bought the games in the set, The Orange Box contains Half-Life 2 plus the first two downloadable episodes (and when will we hear about Episode 3, Valve). It also has the multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 (which Valve continues to add new content to on a regular basis) and the acclaimed puzzle shooter Portal. All of those games can be yours for just $9.99 this weekend only which is a 66 percent discount from The Orange Box's regular price.

Last night we mentioned that Valve has put Team Fortress 2 on sale for this weekend only. Now the company has announced, via its weekly Steam news update (it pops up when you sign onto Steam) that they have made one of their games available for download free of charge...permanently.

That game is Peggle Extreme, a version of Popcap Games' addictive casual arcade game that has art and sound themes from Valve's Orange Box game collection. Last year the game was a free bonus for anyone who bought The Orange Box but now the former $9.99 game is free to any Steam user. Peggle Extreme has 10 levels, five Master Challenges and duel mode which you can play with either a friend or a computer opponent.

Earlier today we reported that a former Half-Life 2 mod turned commerical product called Garry's Mod had generated over $3 million in sales just by being on Valve's Steam service. Today Gamasutra has an article that reveals how many games Valve itself has sold. There's a big catch, however. The numbers are only for retail sales of Valve's products. They don't include the number of units sold from the Steam service.

Valve has always kept specifc numbers related to its Steam service to itself but there have been hints that those numbers are considerable. Even Valve's own CEO Gabe Newell has said he expects Steam sales of its games to surpass retail sales numbers.

So while these figures don't really give the whole picture here are Valve's own numbers on the retail sales of its games so far. The numbers do not include Valve's just released zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead. They also, for some unknown reason, don't include sales of the stand alone version of Day of Defeat which Activision released in 2005. Finally they don't include the retail sales of the PC versions of Team Fortress 2, Portal and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 which were released as separate products several months after the release of The Orange Box.

Half-Life: 9.3 million units
Half-Life Opposing Force: 1.1 million units
Half-Life Blue Shift: 800,000 units
Counter-Strike: 4.2 million units
Counter-Strike Condition Zero: 2.9 million units
Counter-Strike Source: 2.1 million units
Half-Life 2: 6.5 million units
Half-Life 2 Episode 1: 1.4 million units
The Orange Box: 3 million units