I know that some of you are a little cranky about the fact that you were expected to buy The Orange Box in its entirety, when maybe you were only after one of the three games. If only you'd had a way of paying for games online, and downloading your purchases! If only the games had been released separately, so you could pick and choose!

Well, finally, your requests have been answered, and Team Fortress 2, Portal and the Half-Life 2 Episode Pack will be available as stand-alone titles, in-store from April 11th worldwide.


Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, Portal
To recap, the former contents of The Orange Box that will now be sent off into the world by themselves for PC:

The Half-Life 2 Episode Pack contains both Half-Life 2: Episode One and Episode Two, the award-winning new episodes for the best-selling, highest-rated first-person action franchise of all time. You'll also get Half-Life 2 Deathmatch for some online play, if that's your thing. As was the case with The Orange Box, if you've already got any one of these titles, you can use Steam's "gift" feature to hand it to a friend.

Team Fortress 2 is the new-look sequel to the game credited with putting team-based multiplayer gaming on the map, and has been named Multiplayer Game of the Year by various media outlets. This retail copy contains the recently released Badlands map like all PC versions of the game, and also has the ability to receive auto-updates via Steam, including the highly-anticipated Goldrush, a new map and accompanying gameplay mode which combines the timed attack and defend gameplay of Dustbowl with the escort-style gameplay of Hunted.

Portal is a thing of beauty, a unique single-player title that seamlessly mixes adventure, first-person action and puzzles. It has been named Game of the Year by more than 30 publications around the globe, plus bagging 40 awards for special achievements in writing, game design and even music, thanks to the classic "Still Alive" by GLaDOS and Jonathon Coulton.

Doug Lombardi, vice president of marketing at Valve explains:

"Given the unique nature and length of the games inside The Orange Box, the compilation approach was the right vehicle for the debut of these titles at retail. With the flexibility of having different pricing and packaging options via Steam, we were able to test the market viability of the individual products. The results show an overwhelming demand for these stand-alone offerings as well as The Orange Box. This gives us tremendous confidence as we bring gamers more ways to get these titles at retail."

To reassure you, each one of these stand-alone titles includes full support for automatic updates and Steamworks achievements, and none of them require the original Half-Life 2 to play. We'll let you know more details on the Australian release as they come to hand.

Oh - also, no word yet on Australian prices, but we do have the suggested American ones: HL2: Episode Pack and TF2 are both a suggested US$29.99, while Portal is a tad cheaper, at US$19.99. Hm - aren't they the same prices as they're currently charging on Steam? Interesting.