Portal was offered to XBLA, but rejected

GamesIndustry.biz has learnt that Valve asked Microsoft if it was possible to place its award-winning Orange Box title, Portal, on Xbox Live Arcade for download, but that it was rejected.

"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," said Doug Lombardi, VP of marketing at Valve. "[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]."

But Lombardi did hint that something might be possible in the future: "I think it's a trade-off, we'll see it one day.

"It always happens once it's been proven and I think it's been proven now on Steam, so I'm sure it'll migrate back to the consoles just like everything else does."

Portal was one of five titles available as part of last year's acclaimed Orange Box release, and won three awards - including Game of the Year - at this year's GDC event in San Francisco.

Microsoft increased the size limit for Xbox Live Arcade titles last March to 150MB, up from its previous limit of 50MB.