What's Happening in Bellevue, WA…

A recent visit to the Valve offices in Bellevue by Tim Cook at Apple, has lit up news sites in the digital media, wondering what the meeting could mean.

Many commentators in the industry have suggested that a video game partnership could be on the table. Others have suggested it could have something to do with the internet enabled TV Apple is rumored to be developing.

Many have reasonably put forward a deal suggesting the TV and video games platform could be integrated. Supporting this, Valve are themselves heavily rumored to be creating a TV connected console.

This makes sense, as the Californian giant have long wanted to become more involved in the video gaming market. For their part, Valve have a great pedigree in the sector too, being creators of the Half-Life and Left 4 Dead games

They also created the Steam online gaming platform and are known to want to release a console version.

Another rumor suggests that the Bellevue company are simply being approached for their expertise with regards to launching a platform similar to iTunes to deliver console-quality gaming.

It is not the first time the two parties have met though.

The first time the business card printing presses were rolling for such a meet was as far back as 2007. There have been at least three other instances since then too, with Apple never following up on initial discussions.

This time though, with the chief executive himself in attendance, things do seem to be a somewhat more meaningful.