Valve Designer: No Beefed Up Steam Deck 2 for 'a Few Years'

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Throwing cold water on Steam Deck 2 dreams and rumors

Steam Deck 2
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

A year after its official launch, it's clear that Valve's Steam Deck PC Gaming handheld has been an unquestionable success. Despite early production backlogs, Valve's device has received a mostly warm response from reviewers (us included), and it's currently occupying the number three spot on the company's own global best sellers list (for whatever that means, exactly).

But a year on, in a market focused on performance and upgrades, people have naturally been wondering when we might see a sequel to the device, offering up better performance – especially after testing has shown its limits in the latest games. But a recent interview with Valve designer Lawrence Yang and engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais over at Rock Paper Shotgun has thrown cold water on anyone hoping for a more powerful Steam Deck to arrive any time in the next couple years.

Yang does admit that the device's success "has made us even more excited to look closely at what can be improved." But he's clear that there's basically no chance that your existing Steam Deck (or one you might buy in the near future, naturally) is going to feel obsolete for years to come (at least in terms of performance). Yang told the gaming outlet that "a true next-gen Deck with a significant bump in horsepower wouldn’t be for a few years."

Of course, we'd already heard late last year that the next iteration of the Steam Deck was likely going to be focused on screen and battery improvements, rather than pushing more pixels. So we weren't expecting the company to move beyond its custom AMD Van Gogh-based APU in 2023. Now it seems likely that on-the-go gamers will have to wait until at least 2026 (or perhaps holiday season, 2025?) to get a true follow-up device from Valve.

This gives handheld competitors like Ayaneo a fairly large window to deliver something significantly more powerful. But those devices so far have been much more expensive than the Steam Deck, and to varying degrees, less refined. So we imagine that plenty of people will just hold tight to their existing Decks and see how things play out over the next few years.

Of course, Valve also has no real business reason to tell anyone about its future Steam Deck plans, now that it's got its production kinks ironed out and its existing device is apparently selling very well. If and when sales slide precipitously, or key games become truly unplayable on the first-gen device, the company may suddenly be more forthcoming about its plans for a more powerful portable PC. 

Presuming it's already hard at work on designs for a next-gen device behind closed doors, if Valve can source the necessary new components, it could certainly move up those plans to sometime before early 2026. Or at least that's what the on-the-go gamer in me wants to believe. 

Matt Safford
Matt Safford

After a rough start with the Mattel Aquarius as a child, Matt built his first PC in the late 1990s and ventured into mild PC modding in the early 2000s. He’s spent the last 15 years covering emerging technology for Smithsonian, Popular Science, and Consumer Reports, while testing components and PCs for Computer Shopper, PCMag and Digital Trends.

9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • -Fran-
    And that's perfectly fine. Valve needs a baseline (a good one) and the Steam Deck fits the bill quite well.

    There's already other OEMs looking forward to integrate their small devices / ultra portable console-PC designs with SteamOS 3 and get the people looking for a "more powerful Steam Deck".

    Valve can definitely improve on key areas (as I've repeated in multiple occasions): battery life first and foremost and then cooling (maybe?) and disk space. I've been using the Deck a lot and I haven't found problems with any titles I run it. In fact, I've been using it for VRChat a lot when I'm too lazy to get on VR and it just feels so right with the 6-axis controlling scheme.

    I wish other 3rd party (non-Steam) games would run in Linux native, like Genshin Impact, but oh welp. I guess I can always install Windows... Ugh.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • Giroro
    The problem with the steam deck, is that it's roughly twice the size you think it will be, based on how it looks in pictures. You see it and you think "Nintendo Switch", but then it shows up and you realize it's closer to trying to hold a full-sized keyboard by its sides. The Steam Deck is more annoying and embarrassing to lug around in it's bulky case than to just slip a laptop into a backpack.
    I saw an adult man in a kitty-eared hat trying to play a game on a Steam Deck in an airport once, and the only thought in my hand was "Dang, I'm glad I left mine at home for this trip." I hope they put it away before getting on the plane, because coach airline seats aren't really wide enough for somebody to comfortably hold a steam deck during a full flight.

    So, maybe not many Steam Deck buyers would be willing to buy another one, regardless of how it performs. I know I for one wouldn't. Their effort would be much better applied toward shrinking their current platform down to a usable size, preferably with either a bigger screen or much smaller bezels.
    Reply
  • Gam3r01
    I think its a good move, avoid incremental upgrades and produce something substantially improved at a later date instead.
    Reply
  • PlaneInTheSky
    The main reason I passed on the Steam Deck is the fact it is inefficient and bulky. Performance was fine.

    I want a Steam Deck with longer battery life, with fans that make less noise.

    And it could also be a bit smaller and lighter imo. The Nintendo Switch is the perfect size for me, maybe they can come up with a Steam Mini or something.

    Until they can come up with a smaller Steam Deck with better battery efficiency, I'll stick with Nintendo Switch.

    But like I said, performance is fine, I don't need god damn raytracing on a mobile device. Give me battery life, make this thing hyper efficient.
    Reply
  • JTWrenn
    The steamdeck is perfect for in home wireless play which is really where I think it will be very successful. To some degree it can even be used as a docked gaming pc for low res play and does it pretty well. Getting it as a full mobile is just not what it is really good for at this point. Still very cool, and has so many possibilities but...just not there yet. That being said without it...none of the competitors would likely even exist.

    I am very excited to see where this product line goes.
    Reply
  • hannibal
    Yeah... It is easier to maintain game compability if they keep same speed longer time. And based on what I read, it may be better to make it smaller, than make it faster. So maybe in two years we get steam deck 2 that has same speed, but is 20% smaller. And steam deck 3 at 2035 could actually get small speed pump.
    Reply
  • citral23
    Note that while it is a PC in essence, its hardware is configured much more like a console than a traditional laptop, with everything done to grant the GPU max ram bandwidth to the detriment of the CPU.
    Given how the platform is maturing, to me it makes perfect sense to keep refining it for some years down the line and provide a solid baseline for devs to optimize their game against an existing hardware rather than a gazillion watts RTX4090 (cough hogwarts cough)

    We'll see what kernel 6.1 brings to it but I expect a massive bump in battery life for less demanding games, idle, browsing etc, amd_pstate brought a roughly +30% battery life to my 5600U laptop over the old acpi driver.

    There's a lot that needs to be done still, and switching soon to a more powerful APU for a dozen % increase in perfs with no better battery life is not a good move, better wait until there's a bigger jump in process node and general perfs improvements, so next gen probably.
    Reply
  • drivinfast247
    If I bought one today they'll release a new model within a year.
    Reply
  • MiniITXEconomy
    Giroro said:
    The problem with the steam deck... more annoying and embarrassing to lug around in it's bulky case... I saw an adult man in a kitty-eared hat trying to play a game on a Steam Deck in an airport once, and the only thought in my hand (sic) was "Dang, I'm glad I left mine at home for this trip."

    So, maybe not many Steam Deck buyers would be willing to buy another one, regardless of how it performs. I know I for one wouldn't. Their effort would be much better applied toward shrinking their current platform down to a usable size, preferably with either a bigger screen or much smaller bezels.

    No, these sound entirely like "you" problems. I'll admit the Steam Deck's size took some getting used to, but it wasn't an insurmountable problem, just took me using it for a week until I was comfortable! I think there are legitimate arguments to be made in favor of downscaling, but doing so to appease the vanity of those who can't be themselves in public is not one of them. And this is coming from someone who sufferes from social anxiety!
    Reply