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Valve: "No one here was meeting with Tim Cook"

Newell: "We have a long list of things we'd love to see Apple do to support games and gaming better."
Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Senior Contributing Editor

Valve co-founder and managing director, Gabe Newell, stamped on the rumours that Apple CEO Tim Cook visited the company for secret talks last week.

In an interview given to Seven Day Cooldown, Newell totally dismisses the rumor that Tim Cook -- or anyone from Apple -- stepped foot into Valve HQ.

"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."

But is seems that the rumor was so convincing that even Newell himself got caught up in the excitement.

"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."

This would seem to draw a conclusive line beneath any suggestion of cooperation between Apple and Valve over a games console or an effort to bring more Valve games to the Mac platform.

The rumor never made that much sense anyway, as it was never clearly explained where Valve fitted into the Apple equation. If there's a true demand for more games on the Mac platform, then Valve will no doubt enter that market with renewed vigor, given that the company already has a presence on the Mac OS X platform.

As to the suggestion that Apple needing Valve's assistance to develop a games console, why would a company with knockout products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad under its belt -- not to mention over $100 billion in the bank -- would need to go to a company with no experience in developing hardware for assistance?

Image credit: Valve.

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