Portal, the eccentric puzzle-brain buster game included with The Orange Box, was offered to Xbox Live Arcade but was shoved down the black hole of rejection by Microsoft. It turns out that Portal couldn’t meet certain parameters in order to qualify for a spot on XBLA.
Doug Lombardi, marketing director at Valve said they were looking forward to Portal being on Microsoft’s download service but was hitting some snags.
"We’d love to do that. Right now it’s something we’d love to do. I’d love to sell Portal on Xbox live. [But] the platform holders aren’t doing that right now. There’s a size limit and all kinds of other things."
The present size limitation of Xbox Live games is 150MB.
"We’ve asked [Microsoft], we said we were open to it. So it’s a decision for the platform holder and how they want to make the games available and how much bandwidth they want to [allow]. It always happens once it’s been proven and I think it’s been proven now on Steam, so I’m sure it’ll migrate back to the consoles just like everything else does."
Portal was a surprise sleeper hit as it won high praise for its unique levels and engaging gameplay. Making Portal available for download on XBLA would definitely give it a second wind for gamers who didn’t purchase The Orange Box game bundle.
[Via gamesindustry]
