Steam Deck, the handheld gaming computer from Valve that allows players to access many of their favorite PC titles on the go, is about to celebrate its second anniversary this February, but a successor may still be a long ways off, according to the latest news from Lawrence Yang, one of the portable’s chief designers. Yang was recently asked whether Valve would follow the trend of yearly handheld releases like its competitors (e.g., what ASUS has been doing with the ROG Ally), but he replied that there’s “no reason to do that,” suggesting that a Steam Deck 2 will arrive when there’s a “generational leap in compute,” one that Valve can introduce without a significant hit to battery life. The Steam Deck, including the newer models with OLED displays, remains available for purchase starting at $349 on Steam.
“It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence,” said Yang. “We’re not going to do a bump every year. There’s no reason to do that. And, honestly, from our perspective, that’s kind of not really fair to your customers to come out with something so soon that’s only incrementally better. So we really do want to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before we ship the real second generation of Steam Deck. But it is something that we’re excited about and we’re working on.”