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.”
Discussion (8 replies)
Join Discussion →Like pretty much every other console vendor does.
I wouldn't be surprised if the AMD Ryzen Z2 Series is on the table for the next one.
2025: Valve says a next-gen Steam Deck 2 still isn't possible, two years after it last said exactly the same thing
& then 2027: Valve says a next-gen Steam Deck 2 still isn't possible, two years after it last said exactly the same thing
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So, there is a wide gulf between
“Can play the game”
And
“Can max out every setting in a game”
You don’t need much for the first, as Valve well knows
For the second you can never have enough
2027? what the, fake AI crap?
We know for a fact that a Steam Deck 2 will becoming. It's the Steam Deck 3 that everyone should be questioning anyway.
Is AMD even bothering with RDNA4 in laptops/mobile settings?
I figure RDNA5 (UDNA whatever) is when we get the next top to bottom graphics refresh from AMD which will make stuff like Steam Deck 2 possible.
AMD is completely out of the discrete laptop gpu market
What they'll have in 2027 is large APUs with igpus powerful enough to make a separate laptop gpu redundant
But that multi-chiplet solution will still be too costly for valve
In 2029-2030 (zen 7) you can finally expect decently powerful monolithic APUs at a reasonable price
There is also a chance that valve can try qualcomm, off the shelf mobile APU. Lets see.
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