It will be a few years before Steam Deck 2 is announced, says Valve coder
A Valve coder working on the Steam Deck hardware has stated that they do not expect a successor for the hardware to arrive for a few years.
After documents leaked earlier this month suggesting new hardware may be on the way, many people are wondering whether Valve is planning on releasing an updated Steam Deck handheld in the near future.
It will be a few years before Valve put out a Steam Deck successor
The Steam Deck, Valve's handheld PC which allows gamers to play PC titles in console form, has been a huge hit for the company, selling 1.62 million units in 2022 alone.
Despite some documents which leaked recently regarding a new piece of Valve hardware which is rumoured to be released soon, Valve have said it will be a few years before a new Steam Deck is released.
Valve coder, Pierre-Lou Griffais, told CNBC: “Right now 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 and so far, the new releases are coming out with great experiences on Steam Deck.
“Obviously, we’re working with developers on future releases and we’re monitoring the feedback there but so far, I think it has been pretty good on the horsepower front.”
This echoes what Valve designer Lawrence Yang told Rock Paper Shotgun in February: “a true next-gen Deck with a significant bump in horsepower wouldn’t be for a few years.”
Valve is waiting until huge performance updates can be made
It seems that Valve is waiting until major changes can be made to the hardware.
Griffais told The Verge: “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.”
From what Griffais has said, it seems like the current Steam Deck could be the main handheld until at least 2025.
There could be a new Steam Deck in the works, potentially something in line with the Nintendo Switch lite which doesn't alter the handheld's ability too much. That said, if you are waiting on a second iteration of the console before buying, you may be waiting a while.
