Valve has said that it wants to make a Steam Deck 2 but doesn’t see it launching “in the next couple of years”.
Valve coder Pierre-Loup Griffais told CNBC at Tokyo Game Show 2023 that the team is currently hard at work on the current Steam Deck, but in terms of what comes next, “we’re kind of looking at this performance target that we have as a stable target for a couple 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,” Griffais explained.
“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.”
Earlier this year, Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang shared similar thoughts when asked about a successor to the handheld. At the time, Yang shared his excitement for the improvements that could be made to the current system, but said that “a true next-gen Deck with a significant bump in horsepower wouldn’t be for a few years”.
Griffais later expanded on his statement to CNBC with The Verge, and said: “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.”
For more, check out our top picks for the best Steam Deck games for your commute, as well as the best PC games you can play right now.
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