Valve doesn't know how much Orange Box cost to develop  "We
don't track that."  In light of recent chatter about
Stranglehold having cost USD 30 million to make, we thought we'd
ask Valve's Gabe Newell how much Orange Box ran to. "I don't
know," he told us at Games Convention. "We don't track that."
"One of the nice things about being an independent developer is
we just keep everybody busy. We're making lots of money, and we
just focus on what we're trying to build and then build it."
All well and good, of course, but surely there must be a number
they want to hit? Somebody in the company who's going to measure
their work against a big number? Apparently not. "No," in fact.
"We're trying to make the decisions that a gamer would if they
were given the opportunity to run a games company," says Newell.
"We've never really even had a conversation internally where we
say 'we've put enough money into this - let's just cut it off'.
That's not even a conversation that happens at Valve."  All this
comes from today