Valve confirm Steam Deck wont have yearly releases, Deck 2 will arrive when a generational performance improvement does

[John Elden Ring]

However, Valve has clarified that the Steam Deck 2 will likely not be hitting shelves anytime soon until a "generational leap in compute" takes place, as reported in an interview with Reviews.org.

The RDNA architecture from AMD was leagues ahead of its Vega offerings in terms of performance and driver support. With just the second iteration, RDNA 2, Valve in partnership with AMD designed a custom chip for the Steam Deck codenamed Van Gogh.

The Steam Deck's APU featured four Zen 2 cores and an eight Compute Unit-based RDNA 2 iGPU, with both architectures dating back to at least 2020. Even with the OLED refresh last year, performance improvements were notable for their absence.

[....] when hit up with the question of a potential successor, Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang replied, "It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence.”

Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-...ional-leap-in-compute-performance-takes-place

 

[TrishaCat]

Reasonable enough. I don't think you can do a handheld with much more power than the Steam Deck currently, without sacrificing battery life at least.
That they're considering a second one at all is a testament to its success however. Valve's previous hardware endeavors have historically been less than successful (referring to the Steam Machine or the Steam Link).
The Steam Deck as is handles itself well enough. It does make me wonder how the Switch 2 will compare to the Steam Deck in power.

 

[Yurinka]

Interesting. It's something positive for devs, who already support a huge amount of devices and more would mean more costs, longer dev tiemes and less profitability.

 

[Boswollox]

Enjoy Steam Deck 2 while you can, because there won't be a Steam Deck 3.

 

[Systemshock2023]

They should up their distribution game before steam deck 2 releases.

 

[ethomaz]

If for several years the device sold 3 million units.
Imagine an early interaction lol
PCMR has no sense about their own market.

BTW I will let here the sales of these devices on Spain in a week

Meta Quest 3: 500 /
Asus ROG Ally: 130 /
Lenovo Legion GO: 30 /
MSI Claw: 10 /

 

[DarkLordOtaku]

They're definitely on to something with the Steam Deck. I know plenty of people who would not normally pick up a handheld device, really excited by this.

 

[Monkeyclaw]

Enjoy Steam Deck 2 while you can, because there won't be a Steam Deck 3.

 

[Monkeyclaw]

If for several years the device sold 3 million units.
Imagine an early interaction lol
PCMR has no sense about their own market.

BTW I will let here the sales of these devices on Spain in a week

Meta Quest 3: 500 /
Asus ROG Ally: 130 /
Lenovo Legion GO: 30 /
MSI Claw: 10 /

Luckily we have you then to tell the pc gaming industry vets how it should be done.

/Sarcasm