Xbox & Valve Are Rumored To Have Exciting E3 2021 Announcement

The E3 rumor mill has put forth what could be an intriguing proposal between Valve and Microsoft, and it could lead to an announcement at this year’s Xbox showcase. This would be highly irregular simply because Valve has made a point of not attending E3 for many years. Valve founder Gabe Newell famously appeared on the Sony stage for Portal 2‘s PlayStation 3 release, but the company has not been a regular presence at the convention since then.

Microsoft’s Xbox showcase is already shaping up to be one for the record books even without a history-making collaboration with Valve. 2021’s show will be the first following the acquisition of Zenimax Media, the parent company of Bethesda, id Software, and several other notable developers. This one move has expanded Xbox’s first-party lineup considerably, and gamers can expect news about titles like Starfield and the final game in Rocksteady’s Wolfenstein trilogy right alongside Halo Infinite. Microsoft has also made great strides with the Game Pass subscription service, porting it over to any platform that will have it. That drive to let those in the Xbox ecosystem truly Play Anywhere is at the heart of the company’s rumored team-up with Valve.

This morning, the PC Gaming Show announced that Valve would be attending the event during E3 for the first time for a “special announcement.” That would be news in and of itself, but it came after known Valve insider Tyler McVicker dropped a video filled with E3 predictions and one particular detail about Valve. According to McVicker, Gabe Newell and Xbox head Phil Spencer have been in conversations specifically regarding Game Pass. As quoted from the video, “the only way Steam can get Game Pass is if Xbox can get Steam.”

This isn’t the first time that a collaboration between Xbox and Steam has hit the rumor mill, and several factors make this more than just pre-E3 hearsay. The mere fact that someone from Valve will be announcing something at E3 is unusual enough to make anyone with knowledge of the company’s inner workings tilt their head. On top of that, Valve supposedly has a portable gaming system in the works, and Gabe Newell mentioned in a recent New Zealand Q&A that more news about Steam and consoles would be coming “by the end of the year.” A version of Steam arriving on the Xbox Series X in some form would certainly fit that tease.

It seems that Valve is on the verge of some major shifts, and a team-up with Microsoft is in the cards at the very least. With Epic Games using piles of Fortnite money to put up a fight with its own PC gaming storefront, it seems that Valve is using innovative tech to position Steam as something more than just a PC gaming hub. Having Steam Link as a standard app on Xbox could open up the console to a host of new games and give Microsoft a brand new selling point to help them against the PlayStation 5. For now, it’s just one more possible industry-shaking announcement that could take the Internet by storm later this week.

Source: Tyler McVicker/YouTube

About The Author