The Black Box



Valve planned on releasing an additional compilation for Windows entitled The Black Box, which would have contained only the new material—Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. The Black Box was later cancelled for retail and is now only available through Steamexclusively to owners of certain ATI graphics cards, who received a voucher for a free copy of The Black Box.[38]

During development, the simultaneous release of two game compilation packages with different content combinations was touted by Valve as a new direction for the game industry. Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, said, "The Black Box and The Orange Box represent a new approach to publishing multiple products on multiple platforms."[39] After first discontinuing The Black Box, however, Valve released all the new material for individual download via Steam.[40] [41] [42]

The Black Box was to be priced US$10 lower than The Orange Box.[43] To compensate for the cancellation of The Black Box, Valve offered gift subscriptions to Steam users who had previously purchased Half-Life 2 or Half-Life 2: Episode One and then purchased The Orange Box so that they could give their second copies of those two games as gifts to people added to their Steam Friends list.[44] Still, the cancellation of The Black Box sparked complaints from game critics and consumers alike, unhappy that they were obliged to pay for games that they already owned.[45] [46] It also raised concerns among those who had bought the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card, which came with a voucher for The Black Box, but Valve clarified that only the retail version of The Black Box had been cancelled.[47] While Valve never expressed its reasons for this decision, industry writers speculated that it might have been to increase profits on retail copies or to avoid customer confusion between similar game packages and their availability across the platforms.[45] [48]

Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orange_Box#The_Black_Box