Those hoping for a Steam Deck Pro version or a Steam Deck 2 – you’re going to be in for a long wait.
Speaking with CNBC, Valve coder Pierre-Lou Griffais says the company does not expect to release a true successor to the handheld gaming console anytime in the next few years.
The Steam Deck has opened up a whole handheld PC market as multiple companies dive in with Windows-powered rivals – the most notable competition being the ASUS ROG Ally.
Many of those devices have better-quality screens and more processing power behind them so can get higher resolution and better frame rates.
However, that extra power comes at the cost of battery life and none can do gaming at a very low power draw quite like the Steam Deck can. Valve is quite happy with the Steam Deck’s current processing power and performance levels and tells the outlet:
“We’re kind of looking at this performance target that we have as a stable target for a couple of years. We think that it’s a pretty sweet spot in terms of being able to play all the experiences from this new generation.”
He adds that they are working with developers on future releases and monitoring feedback, but so far “I think it has been pretty good on the horsepower front”. Separately he tells The Verge that there’s no real reason to offer a new Steam Deck until there’s a significant enough increase in performance to warrant it:
“It’s important to us that the Deck offers a fixed performance target for developers, and that the message to customers is simple, where every Deck can play the same games. As such, changing the performance level is not something we are taking lightly, and we only want to do so when there is a significant enough increase to be had.
We also don’t want more performance to come at a significant cost to power efficiency and battery life. I don’t anticipate such a leap to be possible in the next couple of years, but we’re still closely monitoring innovations in architectures and fabrication processes to see where things are going there.”
This fits with Valve designer Lawrence Yang’s comments earlier this year that we’re a few years away from any potential next-gen Deck.
Source: VGC
