Word came out about this during E3, but details were a little sketchy.

Xbox Live Arcade is getting its own version of Portal, titled Portal: Still Alive. This isn’t a sequel as the title might imply, but a re-release of the original game with extra content.

The obvious question is, will there be more of everyone’s favorite passive-aggressive homicidal artificial intelligence, GLaDOS? The answer is no.

These newer levels will not feature any sort of story elements associated with the original game, including GLaDOS’ murmurings.

In fact, all of the new levels will be from an existing, free map pack. So there isn’t really much draw for people who have already bought Portal from Steam on the PC, and only a little more for people who have already bought it as part of the Orange Box for the Xbox.

Still, having something available at every Xbox owner’s fingertips to puchase digitally whenever they want is better than not having it available. Valve has made clear that the Long Tail works great for them on the PC side. Every time they make a new Team Fortress 2 video, sales spike again because they’re not depending on holding retail shelf space. (Not that Valve has any trouble doing that, but still.)

Valve had previously offered Portal up for direct download sales on Xbox Live Arcade, but Microsoft turned them down.

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