Valve Deck duo Lawrence Yang and Yazan Aldehayyat recently made the press rounds as Australia finally got a proper Steam Deck release in the territory. As a result, Yang and Aldehayyat had to answer the now-standard questions about a potential Steam Deck 2.
Not surprisingly, their response in an interview with Reviews.org (By Eurogamer) remains the same as last year, namely that Valve wants to wait until there is measurable improvement in the technology ecosystem around handheld gaming PCs before even considering a novel version.
Of course, the release of the Steam Deck OLED, a year after the original’s release, may have led some people to expect a certain annual cadence of technical updates to Valve’s mobile devices. Although probably not everyone who had anything to do with Valve and PC hardware releases…
You only have to look at the Valve Index VR headset and all the noise about a second version or sequel of this clever technology to see that Gabe’s gang has no intention of releasing novel, barely iterative hardware just for the sake of sticking the number “2” on the box. And if we want to talk about long-lost sequels, we can give a nod to the creators of Valve software and a certain series related to Freeman.
Valve’s Deck team was also determined to clarify when the OLED device would come out that it would there wasn’t continuation. All this means that no one should expect this event to happen again this year.
By comparison, Yang said in his latest interview that, “It’s important to us, and we’ve tried to make it really clear that we’re not pursuing a one-year term.”
“We won’t do increases every year,” he continues. “There is no reason to do this. And honestly, from our point of view, it’s a little unfair to customers to come out so quickly with something that’s only incrementally better. So we really want to wait for a generational leap in computing without sacrificing battery life before we release a true second-generation Steam Deck. But it’s something we’re excited about and working on.
This echoes almost exactly what Yang told me regarding the launch of the OLED version last year: “It has to be the right time,” he says. “We have to have the right parts for it. So we really want there to be a generational leap in performance so that we can conveniently call it Steam Deck 2.
“We are looking at available chips and APUs. What is currently available is not yet adequate. But maybe in two or three years there will be something that will be good in the same way that our current APU is, in terms of power range, performance and battery consumption, to be able to switch to a new chip, all these elements need to be in the optimal place.”
“For us to create a second version,” Aldehayyat interjects, “we will be able to achieve significant performance improvements while maintaining a similar power range and weight to battery life. And it won’t happen next year or the year after that it will probably be more.”
So don’t expect even a nominal Steam Deck update this year or even next year. I also asked a question about Steam Deck Lite and was told it wasn’t something they were looking at. “I think the next thing we’re working on will be Steam Deck 2,” Yang tells me.
I mean, at least we can be sure of that Is it will come, just don’t expect it anytime soon. And you shouldn’t.
