Valve may be right to wait for a Steam Deck ‘generational leap’, but it ultimately risks being left behind
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Valve tends to be a pretty secretive company. It always has been – and likely wants to stay that way. Even so, that doesn’t stop news of upcoming launches escaping its Bellevue headquarters. Most recently, we learned that while there is no confirmation of a Steam Deck 2 yet, “future new hardware” is being worked on.
Several references to interviews with Valve representatives, from when it launched the Steam Deck in Australia, have been in the spotlight lately. They’ve said that it’s “not really fair to your customers” to keep pumping out yearly handheld releases (something ASUS recently did with the ROG Ally X, and MSI is doing with the MSI Claw 8 AI+).
Valve is waiting for a generational leap
As one of the older gaming PC handhelds on the market, the Steam Deck paved the way for the handheld form factor for PC gaming. Valve did this on its own Linux-based operating system, SteamOS, with many of its rivals opting for Windows 11 instead, something that isn’t quite as efficient. SteamOS is one of the reasons why the Deck can get by with a lower TDP, the more modest hardware being the other reason.
Even though it doesn’t boast hardware that is as good as the likes of the ROG Ally or Legion Go, Valve’s handheld is well-optimized and the Steam Deck Verification badge is a good incentive for developers to ensure that their games run well on it, with Deck-specific optimizations coming into play.
In an interview with Reviews.org, Lawrence Yang, a Steam Deck designer from Valve, noted that they “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”. We’re on board with this idea – bigger is not always better if it restricts the Deck’s portability in the form of limited playtime.
We’re happy with the current Steam Deck… for now
When we say ‘current Steam Deck’, you can see this as either the OLED or LCD model, whichever one you have at home. The OLED model offers some incredible improvements, so some people may regard it as a generational upgrade. We disagree – and so does Valve – “What we said when we launched the OLED was that this is not a second-generation device” said Yang.
The hardware at the heart of the two devices remains largely the same, with the panel type itself being the biggest difference (plus the higher 90Hz refresh rate and improved battery life). Once the OLED model came out, Valve also cut the cost of the original LCDs to maintain great value all around, allowing every model to be competitively priced versus the more expensive Windows alternatives.
The current Steam Deck is starting to show its age, and can (just about) hold its own in titles such as God of War Ragnarok. At the very least, it will always be a go-to machine for more lightweight games. Just yesterday we saw early-access Hades 2 player numbers skyrocket on Steam Deck; an example of a game that is perfectly suited for the Deck.
Moving forward though, competing against the likes of the ROG Ally X with its doubled battery life and beefier Z1 Extreme processor is going to be tough as AAA games become more demanding. We recently saw the Silent Hill 2 remake get some Steam Deck optimizations, but not nearly enough to ditch its ‘unsupported’ tag.