Orange Box PS3 in December Related content
The Orange Box game info
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Orange Box PS3 in December News
PlayStation 3 News by Tom Bramwell
Electronic Arts has told Eurogamer today that The Orange Box for PlayStation 3 will be released in Europe next month on 14th December.
Rumours of a slip to 2008 have been tumbling around behind the scenes in the past week, but an EA spokesperson was adamant that it will be released before the end of the year.
The exact date has now been confirmed since we first published this item a few minutes ago. That's how fast things move in the fast-moving world of the Internet, players.
Eurogamer asked Valve to comment on the release date yesterday but was told it was still to-be-confirmed.
The Orange Box PS3 port, handled by EA in the UK, brings Half-Life 2, Episode One, Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2 - all hugely critically acclaimed - to a Sony format for the first time.
In its Xbox 360 and PC incarnations we celebrated it all the way up to 10.
Portal, in particular, stood out as one of the most interesting games of the year, while Team Fortress 2 has already attracted an enormous online following. The latter will be playable online over Sony's PlayStation Network.
Expect an Orange Box PS3 review in the run-up to its December release.
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Related Games
The Orange Box
Latest Features
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The Orange Box Interview [19]
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The Orange Box Review [426]
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The Orange Box Interview [32]
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The Orange Box Preview [172]
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The Orange Box First Impressions [58]
Latest Videos
Team Fortress 2 - Machinima [11] 11 October, 2007
Team Fortress 2 - Demoman [15] 10 October, 2007
Latest News
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Valve sees "groundswell to abandon" DRM [53]
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Chunky Orange Box PS3 patch released [32]
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Portal song heading to Rock Band [24]
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Episode Two's Hunter goes plush [9]
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"More Portal for sure" - Valve [27]
Latest Screenshots
14 December, 2007 [5]
Release Date Out now!
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tonynibbles
16/11/07 @ 12:20
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..and SingStar :)
For me, OB is a PC game. I'll be keen to see what it's like on PS3, sure, but I feel bad playing it properly on anything other than a PC. |
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Ghettomurph
16/11/07 @ 12:35
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I'll be surprised if this actually surfaces before christmas. It speaks a lot that Valve didnt want to do the game on the PS3 themselves
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BadBoyBonner
16/11/07 @ 12:40
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And just how much the people who coded the PS3 version would like to shine.
Would not be suprised if this is the best version on console. |
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Kazzahdrane
16/11/07 @ 13:14
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Xerx3s:
Valve developed the PC and Xbox360 versions of Orange Box, only the PS3 version was handled by EA. I think it's fair to worry that the PS3 version might be inferior to the 360 one in this case, though hopefully those fears are unfounded and EA does a Good Job. |
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SeesThroughAll
16/11/07 @ 13:19
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The PS3 version will be much worse. Fact.
Fortunately, I already bought the best version: PC. I dare say they wouldn't allow a shoddy version of their beloved franchise to be released anywhere The fact that EA are the ones doing it just shows how much they care about the PS3 version of their beloved franchise. Hate, it seems, is stronger.
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most recently on 16/11/07 @ 13:21
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kangarootoo
16/11/07 @ 13:31
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I would be very surprised if this turned out to be a bad port. It is simply too high profile a title for EA to not focus on. Sony format QA will probably be super picky on it too for the same reason.
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"I would be very surprised if this turned out to be a bad port. It is simply too high profile a title for EA to not focus on."
HAhahaha. On the PS3? They'll be lucky if it sells 150K copies even if it's visually indistinguishable from the 360 version. Bash it out quick and move those tied-up devs onto profitable Wii and 360 games, that'll be upmost in their minds. |
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SeesThroughAll
16/11/07 @ 13:46
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BTW EG Cheers for reviewing it. Looking forwards to that.
Specially the comments. (cracks knuckles) I'm sure EG knows how important it is for you ;) |
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monkie_king
16/11/07 @ 13:54
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any word on what team is doing the port? or are they all just anonymous components of the EA motherbrain now?
just wondering what exactly happened to renderware after EA's acquisition of criterion. are those guys all working on Burnout now, or have the hardcore engine devs been subsumed into some kind of technical group within EA? point being, if they have renderware people on this, i have faith. on the other hand, as garulon mentions, there's little economic incentive to pour vast amounts of capital into the PS3 version, and a dec 14 release date does scream "rush it the fuck through QA in time for Xmas!" |
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monkie_king
16/11/07 @ 13:58
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JMM: playinggamesonakeyboardlikeits1986lol!
(i kid, of course - some of my best comments are written on a keyboard). |
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And just how much the people who coded the PS3 version would like to shine.
Would not be suprised if this is the best version on console. That would be the optimistic view. The pessimistic view would be that the current build is suffering from dreadful framerate problems and that EA will solve this by using lower resolution textures, reducing the draw distance, turning off a whole load of lighting effects, turning off anti-aliasing, making enemy bodies fade away shortly after you've killed them. After this process, the framerate will still suck compared to the Xbox 360 version, but, by then, the project will be seriously over budget and they will be forced to release it anyway to their guillible, game-starved customers. As someone who has owned a PS3 since launch, I already took the pessimistic view and bought an Xbox 360 and a copy of Orange Box to play on it. After all, this is the strategy both EA and Ubisoft (for their Tom Clancy games) have employed for all their PS3 releases so far, so why should they change? PS3 owners will buy the titles anyway and have no idea what they're missing. |
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I'm currently playing through the inital (original HL2) game on the 360 and I've been quite surprised at how dated it already feels. I feel it's hardly pushing the hardware. Given this, I expect the PS3 version to be more or less the same as the 360 tbh.
It's still brilliant, but it does remind you how generally game engines have moved on over the past 3 years. |
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monkie_king
16/11/07 @ 14:31
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@peterfll: ah, but the Xbox HL2 was a pale shadow of the PC version, I believe. Some very chunky models in there and they obviously struggled with texture resolution. There's even a whole G-Man appearance missing, where you're supposed to spot him through binoculars on the coast road. On the Xbox, they took that out completely, so it's just one more empty shack being guarded by combine.
Orange Box is quite a different prospect, what with the HDR and sheer grunt of this generation of consoles. |
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SeesThroughAll
16/11/07 @ 14:43
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COD4 is identical on both consoles idiot.
He believed those comparison shots that had low-end PC screenshots labelled as "PS3". |
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"@Garulon
I suggest EA are a little more forward thinking that you. " OK, explain the forward-thinking benefits of burning huge quantities of man-hours on a six-week late port to get it visually indistinguishable from the 360 version, vs banging it out with it tearing like a fat man's trousers as it struggles to hit 25fps. |
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I'm talking about playing through the inital HL2 campaign as part of The Orange Box on the 360, not HL2 on the Xbox (original Xbox "1"). Which I also had by the way.
Anyhow, I didn't buy The Orange Box and expect it to have an engine like COD4, Halo 3 etc. But I was still a little surprised by how dated it still feels. The Organge Box HL2 texture resolution and frame rate on the 360 is nothing special by 2007 standards, hence my original comment; how hard can it be to get similar results from the PS3? Clearly the PS3 and \ or EA haters will claim its "impossible". |
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monkie_king
16/11/07 @ 14:51
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peterfll: well in that case i'll shut up. for some reason i completely misread that comment.
(edit: some reason == leffe) (edit again, before Apologie turns up an this thread becomes a car wreck: "how hard can it be to get similar results from the PS3?" -- actually pretty difficult if you're trying to port the engine straight over, and treating the PS3 as if it had a normal CPU architecture. Either they're spending the extra time radically reengineering the Source engine from the ground up around data parallelization to make the PS3 version really shine, or they're desperately trying to hack bits out to get the framerate up. This is EA. But really, we won't know until either way until we see it. Benefit of the doubt and all that).
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most recently on 16/11/07 @ 15:03
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No worries love! ;-)
I was speeding through the canals last night on my airboat and the sun was setting and it did look rather lovely still. Haven't seen much evidence of HDR etc, but I haven't started on Episode 1 or 2 yet so don't know if they'll look a bit more fancy. I will say Portal looks very basic for what essentially is a very simple graphical game by, again, 2007 standards. It's lots of fun though. |
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JediMasterMalik
16/11/07 @ 15:12
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@cyacomini - Give me a link which claims otherwise with proof. All comparisons I've seen show it being identical.
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JediMasterMalik
16/11/07 @ 15:30
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What's the difference?
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most recently on 16/11/07 @ 15:30
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"If you are totally anal you can pick a little things. Like the lihting here is better blah blah blah "
Yeah, what's hilarious is a number of fanbois are using CoD4 as some kind of victory for the PS3 - "Look, it's the same as the 360 version!" Er, OK it was supposed to be twice as powerful, but well done. Clap clap clap. |
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Yeah, what's hilarious is a number of fanbois are using CoD4 as some kind of victory for the PS3 - "Look, it's the same as the 360 version!" Er, OK it was supposed to be twice as powerful, but well done. Clap clap clap.
You know, Xbot, if you wonder what to do while waiting for the replacement for your RRoD-ed console, try reading a book instead of trolling PS3 discussions. Countering wild claims that COD4 has worse textures on PS3 than the 360 is "using it as some kind of victory"? You are sad.
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most recently on 16/11/07 @ 16:28
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"You know, Xbot, if you wonder what to do while waiting for the replacement for your RRoD-ed console, try reading a book instead of trolling PS3 discussions."
Is that what you PS3 fanbois do while you're waiting for all those botched 360 ports to finally arrive? "Countering wild claims that COD4 has worse textures on PS3 than the 360 is "using it as some kind of victory"? You are sad. " Um, I agreed with him. Good to know those reaction times are still hyper fast! |
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