Valve isn’t in a rush to release a Steam Deck 2 yet, and there’s a reason. In a recent interview, the company also highlighted how it approaches handheld gaming updates, saying that releasing yearly iterations “isn’t really fair to your customers.” Instead, Valve is holding out for a true “generational leap in compute” power that won’t compromise battery life. For Steam Deck fans waiting for a sequel, the message is clear: patience is key.
No annual Steam Deck releases—and that’s intentional
Valve’s Lawrence Yang and Yazan Aldehayyat team talked to Reviews.org about all the hype surrounding a Steam Deck 2 in an interview. The company’s approach is straightforward: It doesn’t want to fall into a game of releasing the barely improved version of its handheld device every year. “We’re not going to do a bump every year or whatever. From our perspective, that’s not really fair to your customers,” Yang repeated.
In contrast, the gaming industry tends to churn out hardware updates annually and increase what its products do — not because people want them to but because there’s space in it to put them. Contrary to that, Valve waits until a new model delivers a significant improvement in performance and efficiency before it is made available. According to Yang, the team is “waiting for a generational leap in computing without sacrificing battery life.” For those hungry for a follow-up Steam Deck, this could mean waiting a few years.
A familiar stance on new iterations
This stance isn’t new. When Valve launched their Steam Deck OLED, they had similar thoughts. Just a year after the original Deck, Valve made its intentions clear for an update of the OLED: This wasn’t a sequel or another iterative update. Incremental changes don’t justify launching new hardware for the company unless there’s a good technological argument.
It echoes the desire Valve’s products have always fostered a desire, like the rumored successor to the Valve Index VR headset. Valve’s more measured, cautious strategy in the gaming hardware world is somewhat unusual: most companies, even ones creating devices for long-term use such as computers and phones, update the hardware as frequently as annually. Aldehayyat backed this up, explaining that Valve is looking for a “substantial performance improvement while sticking to a similar power range and weight.” In other words, a Steam Deck 2 won’t appear in the next couple of years.
What Valve is thinking about is the future. And they’re watching the market for the chips, for better chips, for APU, Yang said. The future is looking bright, says Yang. In two to three years, we’ll see a Steam Deck 2 that aligns with Valve’s vision. A sequel may take longer, but Valve is patient and wants the next Steam Deck to upgrade the current model. Neither will there be a Steam Deck Lite. The second-generation Steam Deck is going to be Valve’s main focus.
Featured image credit: Steam
