Steam Coming to Consoles? Gabe Newell Offers Cryptic Hint

Steam has spent many years as the preferred storefront for PC players to browse, buy, and download games. And now, Valve CEO Gabe Newell has offered a vague hint that this popular service may be coming to consoles.

In this case, the vague hint came from Newell’s appearance as a guest speaker at Sancta Maria College, a New Zealand high school, on Tuesday. According to a since-deleted video of the event on Reddit, a student in the crowd asked Newell about the possibility of Steam coming to console. This is what he had to say: “You will have a better idea of that by the end of this year.”

Given only that vague hint, players can only speculate what form Steam on consoles might take. Some think this could be as simple as Valve bringing its own games (such as the VR hit Half-Life: Alyx) to consoles. Others think we might get Steam-style functionality directly from our Xbox and PlayStation consoles.

It’s possible this may end up being very disappointing. Back in 2011, Valve made some noise about using Steam on the PS3 for Portal 2. However, when the game came out, it simply required players to log into a Steam account via PS3, while offering no additional Steam features or benefits.

What would you like to see from Steam on console? Let us know in the comments!