Without a doubt, the only thing anyone in the PC world will be talking about next week is Valve's trio of hardware announcements. Steam engine, Steam frameand their new ones Steam controller. But don't forget about the old Steam Deck for now! While Valve didn't announce anything related to handhelds today, they did comment on where they are at when it comes to something like Steam Deck 2.
Talking to IGNValve software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffet shared that there are plans to release an updated version of Steam Deck somewhere in the future, the technology just hasn't been created yet. “Obviously Steam Deck isn't our focus right now, but we've said the same thing before where we're really interested in working on what's next for Steam Deck… the only thing we're sure of is that it's a worthwhile enough performance upgrade to make sense as a standalone product,” Griffeis said.
He noted that Valve isn't interested in marginal performance gains for the same battery life, and that they “want something more decoupled than that… and I think we have a pretty good idea of what the next version of the Steam Deck will be, but there's no offering in that landscape right now, in the SoC.” [System on a Chip] a landscape that we think will truly become the next generation Steam Deck.”
Not that we should encourage hours upon hours of gaming, but battery life is one thing. even Steam Deck OLED struggles with this. It does work better than the original Steam Deck, but it's not necessarily suitable for taking on the road, which is the point of these things. Hopefully Valve has more plans than just increasing battery life. I don't like how the new generation of consoles offer the same experience as their predecessors but with slightly prettier graphics, and I don't want to see that in a hypothetical Steam Deck 2.
