Half-Life 2 Orange and Black Boxes Priced

For months now, we've known that Valve would be shipping its upcoming Half-Life 2 Episode Two in different packages tailored for players with different amounts of Half-Life 2 experience. Gamers on PC, Xbox 360, or PS3 who have no experience with the HL2 sub-franchise can pick up the Half-Life 2 Orange Box, which will contain the original Half-Life 2 as well as Half-Life 2 Episode One, along with the new Episode Two and its pack-in games Portal and the long awaited Team Fortress 2. For gamers who have already played Half-Life 2 and Episode One, the Black Box will only contain the new elements--Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. The Black Box will be available only on PC. What we haven't known is how much this all would cost. IGN is reporting that Orange will go for $59.99, while Black will go for $39.99. Impressively, Orange's price point of $59.99 is the standard PS3/Xbox 360 suggested retail price for standalone games, making the five-in-one package quite a respectable deal. IGN doesn't cite a source for its story, and Valve doesn't appear to have issued a press release, but the information seems believable. In the latest issue of EGM, Valve's Doug Lombardi gave the studio's point of view on the value offered by the packs. "Even if you don't consider Half-Life 2 as part of this package, there's still 20-plus hours of single-player content here, plus really first-class multiplayer with Team Fortress 2," he said. "Our friends at EA think we're putting too much in here." Valve plans to release Half-Life 2 in its Black and Orange incarnations this summer. In addition to the games' Steam release, Electronic Arts will be handling retail distribution through its EA Partners program for independent developers.