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Half-Life 2 Orange/Black Delayed to End of 2007
Wowzer writes "EA and Valve today announced the product configurations of Half-Life 2's The Black Box and The Orange Box, while at the same time confirming another worldwide release date delay from summer 2007 to winter 2007. If you thought the delay was the only bad news, then artwork fans haven't seen the ugly new boxart yet."
I, for one, am absolutely SHOCKED at this news.
As I have mentioned before, packaging a product with TF2 is like throwing it into a black hole from which no release date can escape. Yes, the current TF2 is totally different from the old TF2, but it still carries the same curse. For all I know, TF2 is completely done and ready to ship, and Ep2 or Portal are holding up the works. That is irrelevant. That just means that TF2 has infected the other products with the curse, in much the same way a rat will infect another creature with the plague.
I wouldn't put any money on this thing getting released in Winter '07 either.
In other news, why include two different links to the same exact article in the write-up?
I remember when Gabe stated that HL2 would be coming out, right around the time the ATI deal was going on. I went out and bought a shiny new 9800 Pro, only to find out a few weeks later that HL2 was delayed a year. I wasn't too bitter, as my new card made a bunch of new games play quite nicely, and it lasted for quite awhile.
I do find that Valve's release estimates have been pretty consistently horrible. New game companies often make mistakes when estimating release dates. Valve's been around for awhile, though, so you'd think they'd be doing better. Personally I think it's a result of trying to release on multiple platforms and bundle lots of components into one package.
I'm not sure episodic content is really episodic if there's over a year delay between releases. It's starting to feel more like an expansion pack or something.