14 DAY TRIAL // The Orange Box was one of the big gaming hits of 2007. And as it was developed by Valve, it was a very neatly presented package, with very little issues and bugs to annoy the end user. But the cross-platform launch of the game was bound to create some problems.
Recently, Electronic Arts announced it was releasing the 1.10 update for the PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box. The patch was expected to hit as son as possible after Valve opened up a thread on their forums asking PS3 gamers to point out the main issues with their game. Electronic Arts didn't issue the normal patch notes detailing what the new update fixed and what remains to be fixed in new updates. So, at this point, news are pretty unreliable, but it seems that connectivity users, that mainly plagued Team Fortress players, were fixed and that frame rates are marginally improved. The patch is 128 MB in size.
It's worth noting that Valve do not develop themselves versions of their games for the PlayStation platform. Only the Xbox and the PC versions are developed in-house, while Electronic Arts has offered to put together a team for the PS3 port. Early reviews noticed that frame rates were low and graphics a little lagging on the PS3, but Electronic Arts assured gamers that all the issues would go away by the time the game was to be launched.
It seems that Electronic Arts didn't keep its promise made to the PS3 crowd. There was a significant backlash amongst gamers and reviewers, with some people arguing that people go out and get Xbox consoles to play The Orange Box as it was meant to be played.
Anytime a patch gets released it's good news for gamers, but Electronic Arts really took their sweet time in putting this one out. With no change log to look into, we really hope all the issues that plagued the PS3 version of The Orange Box are now gone.