making sure that the game works on various types of video cards.
maybe doing some code optimisations for the Nvidia cards (since they seem to suck the wang).
but what doesn't make sense is the fact that no matter when they released it, HL2 would still make a shitload of cash!
The gigantic hype-machine that Valve exposed us all to ensured that anyone who didn't live under a rock had heard nothing but good things about HL2. Thusly creating the same...
*sigh*
such a thing would be nice.
If I had known what I know now, I would have "Sam Fisher"ed my way into E3, copied the HL2 E3 presentation (by the looks of it, I don't think it was just a movie...although I could be wrong) and thrown it on to BitTorrent within the hour.