Valve has said it wants to make a Steam Deck 2, but doesn’t see it coming “for the next few years.”
Valve coder Pierre-Loup Griffais told us 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 goal that we have as a stable goal for a few years.”
“We think it’s in a sweet spot in terms of being able to play all the experiences of this new generation and so far the new releases are coming out with great experiences on Steam Deck,” Griffais explains.
“Obviously we’re working with developers on future releases and we’ll keep an eye on the feedback there, but so far I think it’s been pretty good in terms of horsepower.”
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 about the improvements that could be made to the current system, but said that “a true next-gen deck with a significant increase in horsepower wouldn’t exist for a few years.”
Griffais later expanded his statement to CNBC to include The edgeand said: “It’s important to us that the Deck provides a set performance target for developers, and that the message to customers is simple, with every Deck able to play the same games. As such, changing the performance level is not something we do lightly and we only want to do that if there is a sufficiently large increase.
“We also don’t want increased performance to come at a significant cost to energy efficiency and battery life. I don’t expect such a leap to be possible in the coming years, but we are still keeping a close eye on innovations in architecture. and manufacturing processes to see where things are going.”
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