In an apparent correction of Monday’s rumor that Apple CEO Tim Cook visited game maker and distributor Valve last week, gaming site Kotaku now claims to have an excerpt from an unreleased podcast in which Valve Co-Founder and Managing Director Gabe Newell states that Mr. Cook never visited the company.
The rumor began early Monday afternoon when AppleInsider, citing unnamed sources, announced that Mr. Cook had been spotted at Valve’s Bellevue, Washington headquarters. That initial report sparked a flurry of speculation and coverage (as well as some humor) from multiple sites, including TMO, about Apple’s plans for developing its platform for gaming. Discussion ranged from better iOS gaming support, to a dedicated gaming console built jointly by Valve and Apple, to Microsoft Kinect-like gaming on Apple’s rumored television product.
Now, with Mr. Newell’s alleged comments obtained by Kotaku, it appears the entire event never occurred. From the podcast excerpt:
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.
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.
Despite silence from the company when the story initially broke, The Mac Observer reached out to Valve again for confirmation of Mr. Newell’s comments, as the podcast on which he is claimed to have made them is not yet publicly available. We’ll let you know if and when we hear an official response.
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