Valve’s Gabe Newell hints at vague console plans coming “this year”

• 

  Newell poses with faculty at Sancta Maria College before speaking to students at the Auckland school. [credit: Sancta Maria College ]

Valve co-founder and Managing Director Gabe Newell hinted that his company may be planning an expansion into the console space soon.

While speaking on Monday to students at Auckland, New Zealand’s Sancta Maria College (the rough equivalent of a Catholic high school in the US), Newell was asked, “Will Steam be porting any games on consoles, or will it just stay on PC?” The answer, as recorded by Reddit user Odysseic, was a vague gesture at unspecified plans. “You will get a better idea of that by the end of this year… and it won’t be the answer you expect,” Newell said. “You’ll say, ‘Ah-ha! Now I get what he was talking about.'”

“The answer you expect” would probably be “we’re sticking with PC games,” so any answer involving console plans would definitely be unexpected. But the lack of specifics in Newell’s statement has left a lot of Valve-watchers guessing.