Gabe Newell offers vague hint about Steam coming to consoles

According to a recent tease from Valve CEO Gabe Newell, Steam may well end up on consoles in some form or another soon.

Steam is known as the one-stop shop for all things PC gaming, and for the longest time, it enjoyed an unchallenged reign as the PC storefront of choice. Only recently has its market share been contested, thanks to encroaching competition from Epic Games Store.

During a public panel in New Zealand (which was recorded by Reddit user Odysseic), Valve CEO Gabe Newell made an appearance and answered questions from the crowd. When an audience member asked if Steam would come to consoles, Newell replied simply: "You will have a better idea of that by the end of this year."

As for what this actually means, well, your guess is as good as ours. It could be Newell saying that Valve intends to launch its games on PlayStation and Xbox platforms (wouldn't Half-Life: Alyx look nice on PSVR 2?) or it could be a nod towards the storefront actually arriving in a meaningful way on consoles.

If you're eager for some sort of rough timeline, it's worth noting that Valve has a good relationship with The Game Awards – it's where the company first showed off Half-Life: Alyx, after all. Given that Geoff Keighley's awards show typically takes place towards the end of the year, the timings check out too. Of course, none of this has been confrimed.

This isn't the first time we've seen grumblings of Steam arriving on a console platform, either. Way back in 2011, Valve made a few comments about how Steam would work via the PS3 for Portal 2 – and all of this, of course, amounted to little more than having to log in with your Steam account on PS3 to play Portal 2.