In an interview with Penny Arcade, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell honestly revealed that “if we have to sell hardware we will.” As he commented on the manufacturing of gaming hardware, and explicitly stated that hardware must keep up with technological advances. “I mean, Sega and Atari and lots of others – Vectrex, Commodore…you either figure out how to move forward or you get left behind.”

Valve have not yet ventured into the design and production of hardware; focusing on their games (Portal, Half Life, Team Fortress) and their online gaming service Steam. However, Newell shows interest in developing hardware including wearable items. Newell admits that ”We have no reason to believe we’re any good at it; it’s more we think that we need to continue to have innovation, and if the only way to get these kind of projects started is by us going and developing and selling the hardware directly then that’s what we’ll do.”

Would Valve hardware be a tremendous success? Or would it be overshadowed by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo?

Read the full interview with Gabe Newell here.

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