Gabe Newell: Apple will redefine games consoles

Valve founder Gabe Newell believes Apple may be preparing to redefine the games console market with a future launch, he has told The Seattle Times.

'I suspect Apple will launch a living-room product that redefines people's expectations really strongly and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear,' said Newell.

However, Newell admitted that he wasn't hiding any insider information and did not know if there really was such a product in Apple's pipeline.

Newell then moved on to discuss the problems of closed platforms and, according to The Seattle Times, said that if Valve were to ever release a a hardware platform itself then it would be designed as open to competing services.

'I'm worried that the things that traditionally have been the source of a lot of innovation are going,' said Newell.

'There's going to be an attempt to close those off so somebody will say, 'I'm tired of competing with Google, I'm tired of competing with Facebook, I'll apply a console model and exclude the competitors I don't like from my world.''

Again though, Newell was only discussing the Valve console hypothetically and was not announcing anything in particular.

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