With its smallish size and huge successes (including winning Game of the Year at this year's GDC), we haven't been the only ones wondering why Portal was never seemingly considered for release as a downloadable title via the Xbox Live Arcade. Well, in actuality is has been.

According to Gamesindustry.biz, the site has learned that Valve actually offered up the game to Microsoft for inclusion in the Xbox Live Arcade service, but Microsoft turned it down.

"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, marketing director 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]."

So apparently the old size limit restriction strikes again. Lombardi hasn't closed the door on a release in the future however: "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."

Source: Gamesindustry.biz