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Sad news of the day: HL2:E2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal pushed to FEB 2007

We probably should have all seen this one coming. If it was just one game, we'd be expecting a Winter 2006 release, but now it's coming with Team Fortress 2 and Portal, two amazing must-buy games in their own right that I'd really like them to take their time on. Plus there's the whole "Simultaneous release on PC, Xbox360 and PS3" thing. That's going to take time.

Valve's Doug Lombardi sat down with Eurogamer at the Leipzig Games Convention for the scoop:

Eurogamer: Originally you said you'd hoped to get it ready this year. Is there a particular reason you had to change that?

Doug Lombardi: No, it's just sort of classic Valve being overly aggressive on our dates. But we're aiming for Q1 right now and we're really far along in the playtest stage. You know, our thing is always that we're trying to make really good experiences and so we're going to manage to that rather than the schedule.

Repeat after me:

I do not want Valve to screw up any of these three games.

I want Valve to take whatever reasonable period of time they want to make these games as good as they can possibly be.

I have the willpower to wait another six months for these games.

In the meantime, possibly to rub salt in the wound, a bunch of new shaky-cam videos of these three games from the Leipzig Games Convention have surfaced on the internet's #1 video dumping ground. You want to see the new 2fort, right? Right?

Team Fortress 2 @ GC2006
Portal @ GC2006
HL2:Episode 2 @ GC2006: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

High-Def versions of some of these videos like the new TF2 trailer are expected to show up on Steam some time next week.

In other Steam-related news, famed indie dev Introversion has expanded their commitment to Steam by announcing the immediate availability of Uplink for the bargain-basement price of $9.95 or in a double pack with their other game Darwinia for $19.95. Furthermore, their upcoming game Defcon (which I've been beta-testing for a couple months now) will be coming to Steam in September for $14.95.

So that's your Valve-related news for the week. Hopefully this will be the last of the delays we get to hear about for HL2:E2 and friends.

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