Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, Portal In Summer 2007

Delays seem to be the order of the day, so here's another one - Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Oh, and Team Fortress 2. And, of course, Portal. They all go (down) together, after all. Initially scheduled for release in late 2006, Valve's collection was first pushed back to early 2007 in August (story). Now, the developer says that Episode Two won't arrive before the summer of 2007. That's roughly a 6 months delay so far... and they still have a ways to go until they set a final release date.

The bad news was broken by CVG, who writes the following:

"Valve's Doug Lombardi told CVG today that Half-Life 2: Episode Two's release has slipped from Q1 2007 back to summer 2007. Lombardi told us that the super developer is "now targeting summer 2007" for a release. This obviously affects Team Fortress 2 and Portal, which all form part of mouth-watering Episode Two package.

(...)

The reason for the further delay to summer 2007 hasn't been given, but we imagine it's simply the case of Episode Two, TF2 and Portal being massive, and requiring extra development time."

Given this delay, and the fact that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Half-Life 2 will feature all the back content up to - and including - Episode Two, it's pretty safe to assume that the next-gen versions of HL2 won't be released before summer 2007 either.

At this rate, how on earth are they going to finish Half-Life 2: Episode Three by the end of 2007, as previously promised? And how much of an "episodic gaming" is it, when you have to wait a whole damn year, just to play another "episode" with a few hours worth of gameplay? This is even more ridiculous, as it comes from a company like Valve, who pioneered digital distribution with their Steam platform. So much for setting an example.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)