Gabe Newell: No One At Valve Met with Tim Cook Last Week

@tom - Last week the video game industry was buzzing about a rumored meeting between Valve boss Gabe Newell and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Speculation was rife as to what the two men could have been talking about but many thought it was something to do with Apple iTV.

"Valve and Apple are seemingly a good pair if they get all their ducks lined up in a row correctly which is why an Apple iTV packed with Valve's gaming hardware doesn't seem all that far-fetched,"our own Kevin Parrish wrote earlier week. "That's what Apple Tim Cook reportedly went to go see: progress on the console aspect that will rely on motion and touch-based controls."

However, as exciting as that prospect may seem, it looks like this meeting might never have taken place. Kotaku reports that Gabe Newell quashed the rumor in an interview with Seven Day Cooldown. Gabe said that when they heard the news, even they thought it was true, and it kicked off a flurry of emails asking who the CEO was coming to see.

"We actually, we all sent mail to each other, going, 'Who's Tim Cook meeting with? Is he meeting with you? I'm not meeting with Tim Cook.' So we're... it's one of those rumors that was stated so factually that we were actually confused," he told Seven Day Cooldown.

All is not lost, though. While Gabe confirmed that the meeting never took place, he also expressed a certain desire for such a meeting in the future.

"No one here was meeting with Tim Cook or with anybody at Apple that day. I wish we were! We have a long list of things we'd love to see Apple do to support games and gaming better. But no, we didn't meet with Tim Cook. He seems like a smart guy, but I've never actually met him."

No word on whether or not Newell discussed the rumors regarding a Valve console. Things came to a head late last week when a job posting for an Electronics Engineer popped up on Valve's website and many people thought that it could be connected to the Apple meeting. However, if Gabe is telling the truth, and Valve and Apple haven't met, that means this console has nothing to do with Cupertino. Interesting, eh?