In a recent GameIndustry.biz article, it was revealed that Valve has pitched the critically acclaimed and award winning first person puzzler, Portal, to Microsoft for release on Xbox Live Arcade. Unfortunately, Microsoft turned it down. Portal was originally part of The Orange Box, and due to its large popularity and fan base, was later released individually on PC.

When valve’s marketing director Doug Lombardi was asked about the situation, he said, "We’d love to do that. Right now it’s something we’d love to do. I’d love to sell Portal on Xbox live, [but] the platform holders aren’t doing that right now. There’s a size limit and all kinds of other things. We’ve asked them, we said we were open to it. So it’s a decision for the platform holder and how they want to make the games available and how much bandwidth they want to [allow]."

Microsoft seems unwilling to give up on their size limit for XBLA games, so for the time being, Portal will have to stay on retail shelves. However, with Portal’s success with digital distribution through Steam, it may be hard for Microsoft to pass up much longer.