It's been over a decade since Valve first released The Orange Box, a collection of Valve's PC exclusive titles that the company decided to port over to consoles. The Orange Box marked the first time that games from Valve made their way over from PC to consoles, a big deal since most regard Gabe Newell, the CEO of Valve, as the king of PC. As such, gamers have wondered if Valve would ever port more of its titles over to consoles.
They may have just gotten their answer today, as Newell participated in a Q&A at a local public school. During the event, one of the questions asked if any more Steam games would find their way over to consoles. In response, Newell claimed that everyone interested would receive more information on the topic later this year. However, when his answer met with "oohs" and aahs" from the crowd, Newell claimed that the situation or "answer" wouldn't be what they expected.
Someone attending the event happened to record the answer and posted a snippet containing Gabe Newell's quote over onto Reddit. The recorder, going by the tag Odysseic, claimed to have recorded the entire Q&A and plans on posting the full interview to Reddit when given a chance. Although, even if the full interview brings up other interesting answers, it will not give any more context to what Newell said in the snippet Odysseic managed to post.
With that in mind, it's unclear what exactly Newell's answer means; it could mean anything, including something more or less trivial like Half-Life: Alyx coming to PlayStation VR. It would explain why Newell chose to address the awe of the crowd the way he did. He doesn't want to get their hopes up for another Orange Box-style compilation or something possibly more ambitious, like dealing specifically with the next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles.
Newell claims that fans will receive more information about what Valve has planned near the end of the year, but E3 2021 happens in less than a month, taking place between June 12 and June 15. Xbox plans to show up, and if it shares any deals with Valve, E3 acts as good a platform as any to talk about what they have in store. If not that, then at the very least, E3 lets Xbox confirm whether it has any dealings with Valve and further tease whatever reveal it has scheduled at the end of this year.