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

[Admin]

Valve Designer says a more powerful steam deck sequel isn't in the cards for the next few years.

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

 

[-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.

 

[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.

 

[Gam3r01]

I think its a good move, avoid incremental upgrades and produce something substantially improved at a later date instead.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[drivinfast247]

If I bought one today they'll release a new model within a year.

 

[MiniITXEconomy]

The problem with the steam deck... [it's] 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!