The Black Box

Half life 2 was originally released in 2004.  The Orange Box was released in 2007.  The Orange Box has five games in it.  There is Half Life 2, Episode One and Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2.  When the later three were being planned to be released the development team came up with the idea of The Black Box.  The Black Box would contain Half Life 2’s Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2.  The Black Box was originally priced $10 cheaper than The Orange Box would be priced.  These “box” concepts were developed to bring multiple games to different platforms at a faster pace.  Half Life 2 was released in 2004 through Steam which is a way that Valve distributes games to Windows and Macs.  Half Life 2 was not compatible on any consoles at this time.  Thus The Orange Box was deemed a better choice.  So those that had already bought Half Life 2 via Steam were offered gift vouchers so that they could gift their second copies to friends.  This still caused some grumblings among Steam users.


Portal was put into this mix so that people would have to buy the game.  Originally most of the players bought The Orange Box for the Half Life games and for Team Fortress 2.  It was not expected that Portal would eventually get the fan base that it did.