Here's the bad news from Valve's Doug Lombardi:
The previously announced September 30th release date for Half-Life 2 is being pushed back. We are currently targeting a holiday release, but do not have a specific "in-store" date to share at this time. We will release that information as soon as we have confirmed a new date.
We're very glad all this release date nonsense is over with and think Valve should have confirmed this earlier.
http://www.planethalflife.com