At the end of November 2013, Ubuntu / Canonical contacted Tranquil PC to commission the design and manufacture of what would become known as 'The Orange Box'. Today, 13th May 2014, Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth launches the product to the world at OpenStack (Atlanta).

The Orange Box is an innovative, custom designed micro cluster chassis, envisioned by Canonical, and contract manufactured by TranquilPC Limited. The chassis includes a small cluster of Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) boards, and is particularly well suited for portable demonstration and local prototyping of cloud workloads. The Orange Box, manufactured in the UK to exacting standards is available to order and ships internationally (free of charge). For more information, visit this page.

Valve has confirmed to Joystiq that The Orange Box -Valve's acclaimed compilation containing Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 - will be split into separate PC titles on April 9th. Valve has yet to officially announce pricing details, but retailers currently list Portal at $19.99 and the other two packages at $29.99 each. Expect more details soon.

Valve Software is still working out exactly what it's going to do with Half-Life 2: Episode Three. "We don't know entirely what's happening in the next episode, but we're gonna figure it out!", a laughing David Speyrer, Episode Two project lead, has told PC Zone magazine. "There are always things we want to do that we can't because of the constraints of either the story or the arc we've laid out for the gameplay - or just time", he continued in a feature dissecting Valve's Orange Box, part one of which you can read on PC Zone's site here. "So we shelve them and carry on. Ideas fly around here quite a bit, so we have this huge laundry list of things to try for the next thing...", Speyrer concluded. Don't expect Episode III any time soon then by the looks of it.

I bring good news for those of us who don't want to spend $50 on all the games included with Orange Box: Valve is planning on releasing the games as separate titles. As Warren Jenson, CFO and executive VP of Electronic Arts (who owns Valve) so eloquently put it, "We are unbundling Orange Box and releasing separate PC SKUs". The separate SKUs are likely to arrive before March 31st, when the fiscal year ends. Pricing, availability, and release date are not clear at this point. It is also unclear whether or not the Orange Box will continue to be sold as a package, or if the Orange Box will only be sold as a bunch of split-up titles.

When eager gamers purchased Valve's Orange Box, they noticed a new feature in every game included: the achievement system. While some people scoffed it off, others put much time and effort into getting every Orange Box achievement available. You can obviously guess what will happen when all the Achievements have been unlocked: gamers will get bored. In order to prevent this from happening, Valve has been working on brand new achievements for gamers to achieve. At this point, there's a confirmed achievement pack for medics, so expect more of them to clog the Team Fortress 2 servers than usual. Project Manager Erik Johnson confirmed in a public E-mail message to a Steam forum member that we should start seeing new achievement packs in the next couple weeks.

The Orange Box-featuring Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, and Portal, as well as the complete Half-Life 2 experience to date-is now available for pre-purchase via Steam. Pre-purchase The Orange Box before the October 10 release to save 10% off the regular price and get exclusive access to the Team Fortress 2 beta on September 17.

The Orange Box, penned by IGN.com as "the package which could legitimately be called the deal of the century," features three highly-awaited new games by Valve: Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the second installment in the Half-Life 2 episodic trilogy; Team Fortress 2, the sequel to the game that put class-based, multiplayer team warfare on the map; and Portal, the game that blends puzzles, first person action, and adventure gaming to produce an experience like no other.

As the title says, Valve's famous Orange Box will be coming to the PS3 a little later than it will be for the Xbox 360 and the PC. However, this is not due to difficulties with the PS3. The Valve team coding the Orange Box for the PS3 is having some internal difficulties, which will push the final version off for a few weeks in the long run. Valve will still release the Xbox 360 and PC versions as planned, on September 15th.

Edit: It seems as though there is some controversy over the release date of the Orange Box. If it does not come out on September 15th, expect to see Orange Box by October 9th in the USA and October 19th in Europe/PAL territories.