Portal was released last year and received great critical reviews and many gamers fell in love with the game, the Weighted Companion Cube became an overnight success, as did the game. Earlier this year it was let slip that Portal 2 was a certainty. Now Doug Lombardi has informed Eurogamer that we shouldn’t expect to see any more Portal this year.

“In typical Valve tradition, it won’t be Portal with different colours,” said Lombardi, dressed as a companion cube. “I think that when you hit something like that, you have two choices: you can quickly replicate it and stick it out there - do the opportunistic thing and cash in on it; or you can do the crazy thing like we did after Half-Life was so successful and go off and try and say, ‘Okay, that was revolutionary, so its successor has to be equally as revolutionary.’

“That’s the spirit I think we’re approaching it in,” he added. “You won’t see a new Portal at retail this Christmas because of that. That’s the trade off. People want more, but we don’t want to give them more of the same right away because that would just be boring.”

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A sad thing to hear that we won’t be seeing more Portal this year, but I guess that if Valve manage to do like they did with the transition from Half-Life to Half-Life 2 we will end up with a better Portal 2.

I should be busy writing my dissertation proposal but I am struggling to make any headway. I have been randomly fast forwarding through my songs on Media Player failing to find anything to inspire me to work.

Suddenly I hear the opening notes of ‘Still Alive’ that brilliant closing track to Portal. It immediately lifts me from a growing mood of ‘I can’t be arsed’ and instills some work ethic into me. Unfortunately this inspiration led me to write this blog post instead of carrying on with my dissertation proposal, but that is not the point really is it.

This song instantly turned my mood around. All praise to Jonathon Coulton and Ellen McLain for their work on this amazing track. Now back to my work…

In a recent conference call to investors, EA announced plans to bring the three parts of the Orange Box to retail separately on the PC before the end of March. This means that any of you who don’t own Portal already have no more excuses not to! Although no prices have been set, expect them to follow Steam rates. Portal $19.95, TF2 $29.95 and HL2 Ep2 $29.95.

Videogamer.com

Portal has been turned into Art thanks to some crazy person from 4chan. Taking Portal and mixing it up with M.C. Escher has resulted in the following beauty. Just click on the thumbnail for the full version.

Thanks Kotaku!